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Hram the Library of 
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Princeton Ghenalogiral Seminary 


Br OL2t 7 64 
Johnson, E. H. 1841-1906. 
The Holy Spirit then and now 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from | 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


| https://archive.org/details/holyspiritthennoOOjohn = 


Tue Hoty Sprrr 


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vs 


HE HOLY SPIRIT 


Then and How 


ve BY 
Pehl. JOHNSON: Das LED), 


Professor in Crozer Theological Seminary 


Author of 
‘© AN OUTLINE OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY ’’ 
‘¢ THE RELIGIOUS USE OF IMAGINATION ”’ 
and ‘‘THE HIGHEST LIFE’’ 


PHILADELPHIA 
The Griffith & Rowland Press 
I Qt ol” 


Copyright 1904 by the 
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SocrETY 


Published October, 1904 


From the Soctety’s own Press 


To 
MY DEAR COLLEAGUE 


Milton Grosvenor Evans, D. D. 
THE PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AT CROZER 


and to 
My Wife 


WHOSE LONG ILLNESS HAS ILLUSTRATED 
THE GRACES OF THE SPIRIT 
AND WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP HAS 
MADE THIS WORK A JOY 


PREFACE 


Wuat the Holy Spirit did in founding Christianity, 
and what he does for its furtherance, still needs to be 
studiously looked into. Apparently so great need does 
not exist as to any other matter of equal importance. 
Questions are mooted of practical moment, such as 
these: What is new in the new life? How does the 
Holy Spirit produce that newness? How witness to it? 
To what can the new life grow? In what way does the 
Holy Spirit help its growth? How may we hamper and 
baffle the Spirit, or how accept and use his help? Does 
he still guide the disciple into truth? Into how much 
of truth? By what tests may his teaching be sifted 
from one’s own pet fancies, or even from the specious 
persuasions of the father of lies? Is the Spirit of God 
our adviser? and how can I know his counsel from 
whims of my own, or from destructive and demonic 
foolishness? What organized relations does he set up 
between Christians? What authority, or approach to 
authority, does he give to the doctrines and rules of the 
church, or of a single church? What kind of polity 
helps, and what kind hinders his offices to associated 
Christians ? 

Practical and pressing as these questions are, they 
hint at doctrines; and doctrinal issues, pure and simple, 
which for ages had seemed to be settled for sound 
Christians, are reopened in many minds. These, for 
example: In what sense is the Holy Spirit personal? 


vil 


Vill PREFACE 


How is he related to God? How does he operate upon 
the church, or upon the individual? Does he ever act 
without instrumentality, and in what cases? Or what 
instrumentality, if any, does he use? 

If in any suitable way we consult the records of that 
great epoch when knowledge of the truth was copiously 
given, as John tells us, by “an unction from the Holy 
One,” we may hope in some measure either to identify 
or to distinguish the doings of THE HoLy SPIRIT THEN 


AND NOW. 
E. H. J. 


Crozer SEMINARY, October 1, 1904. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER: I 


PHEMMETHOD, OF INQUERY: 3 oe AS t eee cise ed ose 
1. False Methods ; 2. Biblical Theology ; 3. Two Rules. 


CHAPTER II 


1. Old Testament Use ; 2. ee teanea Use: (1) Im- 
personal ; (2) Personal ; (3) Impersonal Personal. 


CHAPTER III 


PEST RCANG WER Oiirad WEN 299 6 Ls deals eison Or al ret iS 
1. Known as in Us; 2. Kane as ‘Distinct from Us. 


CHAPTER IV 
MHEMTRINITV (or Mle ete Ce Le eae ae 


CHAPTER V 


PP MVVAYS: OFSTHE  OPIRIT eco soko cne cee) Hoke eto See 
1. The Issue; 2. Occasional; 3. Ordinary; 4. The Ex- 
planation. 


CHAPTER VI 


PEPE WOE RAS Ute 8 Sitcom eie se ag 
1. The Old Era—Ministry by Symbols ; 2. The Old Era 
—Ministry by Prophecy; 3. The Old Era—Ministry by 
_ Wisdom; 4. The Transition—Christ Had Better Go; 
5. The Transition—Christ Must Go; 6. The New Era. 


1X 


34 


42 


46 


Se 


x CONTENTS 


CHAPTER VII ZAGE 


CHRIST BEGOTTIN. . . 76 
1. The Evidences ; 2. The Obieciones AD) Ante Mosel 
—Ritschl ; (2) Mystical—Walker ; 3. The Consequences: 

(1) Divinity of Christ; (2) Pre- existence of Christ ; (3) 
Dipersonality ; (4) Sinlessness and Susceptibility. 


CHAPTER VIII 


CrrisT INSPALLED 2°. > snc of ioe oid Alera eee 97 
1. The Baptism : (1) of (50 the Person ; (2) of Christ, 
the Official ; 2. The Temptation : (1) Whence?(z) How? 
(3) Withstood ; (4) Typical ; (5) Recurrent ; (6) Outcome : 
a. For Christ; 4. From Christ. 


CHAPTER IX 


CHRIST AIDED “5G 8s gi od shea 123 
I. Personally 5. 2. meaty (1) In Touche (2) iD 
Miracles ; (3) In Suffering ; (4) In Victory. 


CHAPTER X 


CHRIST: VINDICATED (2 nue eile eG ee 158 
i; Loen . (1)c Ene Need: io Bentecose: a. The ‘Attes- 
tation; 4. The Alternative; c. The Culmination ; (3) 
After Pentecost. 2. Now: (1) By Miracle? (2) By Life. 


CHAPTER XI 


CHRIST INTERPRETED .. . freA avisy gt MLS 
I,‘Then:, (2) fhe Teachings a. Bante: a Teachings of 
Jesus ; c. Redemption by Christ; @ Life in Christ; e 
Universality of Christ; (2) The Taught: a. Apostles ; 

6. Prophets; c. The Church; 2. Now: (1) Tradition ; 
(2) Exegesis ; (3) Christian Consciousness ; Comparative 
Effects. 


CONTENTS Xi 


CHAPTER XI PAGE 
OEFICHy Onis WORLD a 26 > tieatan) Gh fom ye mame eo Te 
1. Conviction of Sin; 2. Conviction of Righteousness ; 
3. Conviction of Judgment. 


GHAR TER XITT 


OFFICE TO UDELIEVERS | ha a0y Agid. ter, cba Aine ethan a WM topseod aeeee 
1. The New Life: (1) Its Production ; (2) Its Nature; 
2. Progress of the New Life : (1) The Paradox ; (2) The 
Solution ; (3) The means ; 3. Encouragement of the 
New Life: (1) Representative Views ; (2) Mysticism ; 
(3) Valid Assurance; 4. Equipment of the New Life ; 
5. Outlook of the New Life. 


CHAPTER XIV 


ARTS ET OUSEH OL Dien: enti fh Meets ture MME. Gay trea eran tae e ao 
I. Its Faith ; 2. Its Work. 


CHAPTER XV 
Pine GUIDE BOOK 8 vcs) it Par nents aera 2OT 
1. Defects of a Test: (1) View from Without; (2) 
Authority Unsettled ; (3) Evidence Meagre ; (4) Problem 
of Criticism ; 2. A Convincing Test; New Testament 
Idea of a Christian. 


AEN IO FX SM aT OMEN Mitac rece naa | ed Sa cM Si Reh ee ca Urs fe 307 


Wea i eS 
2 eee me 


hor 
Peet 


tHE Hoty Spirits 


CHAPTER 1 
THE METHOD OF INQUIRY 


1. False Methods 

F we attend to what is glowingly preached or learn- 
| edly written in our day concerning the Holy Spirit, 
the disturbing fact appears that either an overbold piety 
is construing out of experience a doctrine which it pre- 
fers, or resolute orthodoxy is bent on discovering every- 
where in Scripture the final dogmas of theology. If 
whimsical mistakes appear, they are quite invariably mis- 
interpretations of experience. Misinterpretations of ex- 
perience hardly occur apart from overweening con- 
fidence of self-knowledge ; while this unhappy conceit 
is begotten by relish for an imaginary lesson out of 
one’s own life. At an opposite extreme, those who are 
least disposed to make the Spirit of God responsible fore 
oddities, persons of the soberest temper, and often in 
proportion to their sobriety, feel bound to read into the 
Bible, meanings undreamed of in biblical times but 
which for many a century have been the familiar tradi- 
tion of orthodoxy. This is not to say that the data of 
Scripture fail to justify the orthodox dogmas, but it is to 


say that the data and not the dogmas are in the Bible. 
B I 


2 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_So widespread and so cherished are the fruits of these 
erroneous tendencies that, although the remedy is plain, 
few can apply it without sacrificing some prepossession 
of their own. But the sufficient remedy is to ask from 
every text what was its intended purport, what meaning 
was meant. If we venture to add a meaning which the 
passage does not state, but seems to involve, we do this 
at our own proper peril; the Bible ought not to be held 
responsible. Especially on a theme so sacred and so 
incomprehensible as the one before us, we ought to be 
making sure of the facts rather than drawing inferences, 
and the Scriptures are the only adequate source of in- 
formation as to the facts. The doctrine of the Holy 
Spirit is distinctively a doctrine of revelation. It be- 
longed to the Holy Spirit to expound his own work. 
Beyond that authoritative exposition no one has been 
able to take a sure step, although reason has spared no 
lawful effort, and mysticism has put forth every des- 
perate or delighted endeavor, to break through the 
Bible’s bounds. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit needs 
therefore to be reviewed, possibly revised, and probably 
delimited by the unflinching and practically new pro- 
cesses of biblical theology. 


2. Biblical Theology 


This searching method of inquiry is hardly a century 
old, and has not as yet won general deference. If the 
many ever become aware of this method, it will be fol- 
lowed only by the few. It exacts so comprehensive and 
detailed, so docile and judicial study of the Bible, that 
it can become the familiar organon of none but the most 
thorough, most conscientious, and wide-minded of bib- 


THE METHOD OF INQUIRY 3 


lical scholars. Although in the study of our theme it 
would be helpful to a degree, the signs are many that 
its help has been very little or not at all resorted to, 
even in treatises on the Holy Spirit which claim to be 
distinctly scriptural.'. Now and then of late the viola- 
tion of its requirements has proved not less than start- 
ling. In the present undertaking let us make sure that 
we extend to biblical theology the poor courtesy at 
least of a recognition that it exists. 

No doctrine, however well settled, can remain wholly 
unaffected when it passes under this method of reinves- 
tigation. It is a historical method. Biblical theology 
deals with the recorded teachings of the Holy Spirit as 
successive stages and individual phases of belief about 
divine things. It is the only method of inquiry entirely 
fair to the Bible, or safe for ourselves. In the case, to 
be sure, of so unwonted a theological discipline, valor 
may be the better part of discretion. One needs cour- 
age to follow the line which the steady finger of biblical 
theology points out; not that we need feel afraid of the 
Bible’s real teaching, but that we may not be able to 
escape a certain timidity in going about by these un- 
familiar ways to find what that teaching is. To begin 
with, biblical theology forbids us many a trusted proof- 
text. The text, it says, did not signify to its writer, 
nor to its early readers, what it has come to mean to 


1 Exceptionally free from this fault are the recent books by Professor 
Candlish on ‘The Work of the Holy Spirit,’? and Rev. W. E. Bied- 
erwolf’s ‘‘Help to the Study of the Holy Spirit.”’?. The former with 
admirable insight follows the development of the entire doctrine in 
Scripture, and the latter is especially full and satisfactory in treating 
those scriptural expressions which are often used to support oddities of 
doctrine concerning sanctification. 


4 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


us; and naturally we feel a little disturbed when the 
new tactics pulls down our breastworks and snatches 
the familiar weapons from our hands. We are not sur- 
prised, though even more perturbed, to find those 
weapons turned against ourselves. And this may hap- 
pen whenever it is seen that the divine revelation fol- 
lowed a human development. The problem is then 
sprung upon us, how much of a given teaching is from 
God, and how much from man, What, for example, in 
Paul’s ninth of Romans is solid truth, and what is but 
drapery of cloud, rising from the everywhere diffused 
Hebrew idea of God’s sovereignty? Biblical theology 
hints that maybe Paul would not put the matter just 
so in our day. Biblical theology therefore has very 
naturally struck many cautious minds as a highly crit- 
ical and hazardous way of theologizing. But its valid- 
ity cannot be denied, and the only safety is in following 
to the end the path which it indicates. For if real 
question exists at any point as to God’s share in the 
Bible, we must hold firmly to the dictum of the ‘late 
Prof. George R. Bliss, that God’s thought alone is the 
Bible. We must find out at all hazards what God meant 
for teaching. This can be done; and this is why the 
processes of biblical theology, with all their risks, are the 
only processes fair to the Bible and safe for us. 


38. Two Rules 


A primary rule of this new procedure is that each 
writer of Scripture must be interpreted by himself and 
by his ascertained relations to other writers. The old 
rule was, “Compare Scripture with Scripture”; but 
biblical theology has noticed that words and phrases do 


THE METHOD OF INQUIRY 5 


not mean the same thing in different ages, with different 
surroundings, or on the tongues of different men. Its 
rule then is, let every writer interpret himself, or at _ 
most be interpreted by his group. 

Such a rule puts biblical theology into intimate con- 
tact with the higher criticism. For criticism to fix the 
authorship of a document goes far toward fixing its 
meaning ; while, conversely, the alleged meaning of 
some passage raises the question of its authorship. 
Baur’s formidable attack on the New Testament, as writ- 
ings of counter Petrine or Pauline tendency, was quite in 
line with the biblico-theological rule that every writer’s 
characteristic attitude must be kept in view; and the 
replies to Baur were successful because they showed 
that he had misapplied that very rule. It was, indeed, 
to the controversy with Baur and Strauss that the exist- 
ing development of this branch of theology is mostly 
due. Its early battles were fought over the Christologi- 
cal problem ; but rather the more for this reason may 
it now deal with the problem of the Holy Spirit. This 
will appear when certain aspects of John’s teaching are 
compared with that of Paul. 

A still more radical law of interpretation has received 
peculiar emphasis from biblical theology ; and this is 
that the established meaning of a word or phrase must 
always be taken for granted, unless there is unmistaka- 
ble evidence that a new meaning is intended. Obvi- 
ously correct and fundamental as this law is, it is con- 
‘inually disregarded in expositions of our theme. Par- 
ticularly important are its bearings on the problem of 
the Holy Spirit’s personality and relation to the God- 
head. To this problem we now address ourselves, 


GHAPTER Al 


HE OR IT? 


ITH many it is a point of conscience never to 
speak of the Spirit of God as zz But the 


spirit of a man is always called z¢, and without dispar- 
agement to his personality ; also in the first unequivocal 
presentation of the Holy Spirit as a person, the concep- 
tion of sexlessness in spirit as such constantly prevails. 
«J will ask the Father,” said Jesus, “and he will give 
you another helper, to be with you always; the Spirit 
of truth, which the world cannot receive, because it 
sees not nor knows it, but ye know it, as dwelling with 
you and being in you” (John 14:17). The question 
is not whether we may call the Holy Spirit zz, but 
whether we may call it Ze. 


1. Old Testament Use 

~The Hebrew Scriptures never seemed to the Hebrew 
people to teach that the Spirit of God was personally 
distinct from God. With the New Testament before 
us, we may think we see the separate personality of the 
Spirit pre-intimated in the ancient oracles; but it could 
never have been learned nor proved from them. We 
cannot know that this meaning was meant. What the 
offices were which the Old Testament ascribed to the 
Holy Spirit is not just now the question ; but it is safe 
to say that every one of those offices could be fulfilled, 


even though the Spirit were not a distinct person, 
6 / 


HE OR IT? 7 


whereas, if the New Testament affords decisive evidence 
of his distinct personality, it is because only a distinct 
person could do what the Holy Spirit is there said to 
do. All other representations might be adequately ex- 
plained as personifications. 

In the elder Scriptures the Spirit of God is, in gen- 
eral, his life, his vital energy, his innermost self. This 
is at the farthest remove from making the Spirit of God 
a distinct person. As the spirit of a man is the man, 
so the Spirit of God is God. It may be the mind of 
God, and so God himself. Thus Isaiah: “Who hath 
directed the Spirit of Jehovah, or being his counsellor 
hath taught him?” (40: 13.) ‘The presence of the 
Spirit is but the presence of God: “ Whither shall I go 
from thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy pres- 
ence?” (Ps. 139: 7.) This identification of the Spirit 
with God ascribes nothing in particular to the Spirit, 
and the questions about it are literary. But from the 
idea of spirit as life or vital energy spring more char- 
acteristic uses of the word. 

The usage which merely identifies Spirit with God is 
far from prevailing. What the prevalent usage is we 
have no familiar words to set forth, except as familiar 
words may serve when taken etymologically. Thus, as 
regards the Most High, the Spirit was an effluence, the 
energy of God flowing forth; as regards things it was 
an affluence, his energy flowing upon; as regards men 
it was an influence, his energy flowing into. Efflux, 
afflux, influx, these less familiar forms, bent back a little 
toward their earliest signification, tell us what the an- 
cient oracles mean by the Spirit. Or, because spirit 
primarily means breath, the word sfzration has been 


8 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


chosen by theology to set forth the general implications 
and even the metaphysics of the title, Spzvzt of God. Us- 
ing the theological term as a root-word, but without any 
metaphysical implications on our part, we may describe 
the Old Testament’s customary view of the Holy Spirit 
as expiration, aspiration, inspiration, a breathing forth, 
a breathing upon, a breathing into, by divine energy. 
The first act ascribed to the Spirit presented it as 
from God and upon things: “The Spirit of God moved 
upon the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). Isaiah, 
representing a much later type of thought, still speaks 
of the Spirit in the same way, as acting upon beasts and 
birds (34 : 16). Ordinarily it is said to come upon the 
prophets; upon unwilling Balaam (Num. 24: 2) and 
frenzied Saul (1 Sam. 19 : 23, 24), upon the whole line 
of prophets, from Elisha under his double portion (2 
Kings 2 : 9-15), to the Messiah receiving the anointing 
which Isaiah announced (42:1; 61:1) and which Jesus 
claimed (Luke 4: 17f.). In all these cases the Spirit 
used men as it used beasts and things; that is, it was 
a divine energy, coming upon all and controlling all 
alike. This notion of an afflux, sweeping all before it, 
was much more frequent in the Old Testament than 
that of an influx pervading a human soul. A char- 
acteristic and frankly amusing instance is given in the 
story of an attempt by Saul, the jealous king—and he 
had much to try him—against the life of his young 
captain, David, (1 Sam. 19 : 8-24). It was after another 
of David’s prodigious successes against the Philistines, 
when ‘an evil spirit from the Lord” so wrought upon 
Saul that he could not be quieted by David’s harp. On 
the contrary he grew furious and tried to pin the mu- 


HE OR IT? 9 


sician to the wall with his javelin. But David slipped 
away to Samuel, with Saul’s officers after him hot foot. 
They found him at Naioth in Ramah, where Samuel 
stood at the head of his prophets, all prophesying, — 
much as one may see it at this day among the dervishes 
in Egypt. But the good Spirit of God came upon the 
messengers of Saul, and they also prophesied. Three 
successive squads of officers fell under the spell; and 
then Saul, whose earlier experiences ought to have 
taught him better, came himself to end the business. 
But the Spirit did not wait for Saul to reach Samuel. 
It came upon him by the great well that is in Secu, and 
he went on and prophesied until he came to Naioth in 
Ramah. And he also stripped off his clothes, and he 
also prophesied before Samuel, and lay down naked all 
that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is 
Saul also among the prophets ? 

To conceive that God used the prophet as an instru- 
ment rather than equipped him as an agent, controlled 
his faculties rather than elevated his functions, goaded 
him into a mantic fury rather than led him in a rational 
service, this is largely the view of the Old Testament, 
and reveals a primitive way of thinking, signalizing so 
far community with ethnic religions. 

But the higher view is not entirely wanting. It was 
Pharaoh’s view that Joseph, the interpreter of his 
dreams, was “a man zz whom the Spirit of God is” 
(Gen. 41 : 38). The Levites’ confession, as Nehemiah 
reports it, owns that Jehovah had testified for many 
years against his people by his “Spirit zz [perhaps 
through| the prophets” (9:30). The book of Job 
makes the inflowing universal, and Elihu could. justify 


IO THE HOLY SPIRIT 


thus his boldness: “There is a spirit in man, and the 
inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understand- 
ing” (32: 8). Isaiah does not overlook the more spir- 
itual, less mechanical view of inspiration when he would 
exalt the authority of Israel’s greatest leader: “ Then 
he remembered the days of old, Moses and his people, 
saying . . . where is he that put his Holy Spirit within 
him [or perhaps, zz the midst of them] ?” (63:11.) And 
at so late a date as that of the book of Daniel, the 
courts of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar are said to 
recognize the statesman-prophet as one “in whom is the 
spirit of the holy gods” (4:8; 5: 11). 

But in the view commonly taken a prophet was a 
man “possessed.” He did not own himself, could not 
help doing as he did, and should not be made to answer 
for what he could not help doing. This view would 
account, where held, for the occasional impunity with 
which the prophet delivered his message against a 
Jeroboam or an Ahab, while often the subject of an- 
noyances at the hands of the people. It is quite the 
people's way to persecute those whom they fear (1 
Kings 135-174. 18,2218 Gee 27 ee er azO1 Sao de 
38 : 4-28). 

Our English tongue closely corresponds to that of 
the Old Testament in habitually referring to influence 
as over or on, rather than in or through. Recognizing 
these two ways of applying influence, we may more 
succinctly put it that the Old Testament viewed the 
Spirit of God as an effluence from God, and an in- 
fluence either on or in man. “ Thus in the elder Scrip- 
ture the Spirit if uniformly presented as impersonal, 
except when it is identified with God himself, or except 


HE OR If? II 


as the energy of a person may be spoken of as a per- 
sonal energy. .-But just as no one would understand 
that the energy or influence of a man was actually a 
person, and as no one could misunderstand what was ~ 
meant by calling it impersonal, like one’s hand or foot, 
so we need not hesitate to use the same words in the 
same way, and to state that anciently the Spirit of God 
was thought of as personal only in the sense that it 
was the influence of the Supreme Person, and was 
really conceived to be impersonal, because it was put 
forth by, rather than distinguished from, the Maker and 
Ruler of all. 

Notwithstanding the tendency toward polytheism 
based on deification of natural objects or forces, a ten- 
dency which was often too strong for Jehovah-worship 
in Israel, and notwithstanding the more philosophical 
erection of divine functions, such as creation, preserva- 
tion, and destruction, into a kind of divine triad, like 
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva of the Hindus, a fancy widely 
prevalent among the more reflective Orientals, the per- 
sistent instruction of Israel by prophecy and by sore 
discipline had during the Babylonian captivity trained 
the Jewish mind at last to rigid, uncompromising, and 
arrogant monotheism. It was so serious an obstacle to 
Christianity that our religion had but a brief and un- 
fruitful history among the Jews. Ebionitism promptly 
set itself against faith in the divinity of Christ, which 
is of the very genius of Christianity. We may also re- 
gard as completely established by the time when Christ 
came the conception of the Spirit of God as an imper- 
sonal energy or influence from God 6perating on or in 
things, animals, and men, : 


12 THE“HOLY -SPIRIT 


2: New Testament Use 

In entering on the study of New Testament usage 
it is essential to bear in mind that the established mean- 
ing of the title Spzrvit of God, Holy Spirit, or Spirit 
either with or without a qualifying addition, must be un- 
derstood in the Old Testament sense, unless there is 
unmistakable proof that a new sense is intended. How 
important this rule is will appear again and again, and 
presently in part. It will at the same time be seen how 
completely the rule is overlooked in current expositions 
of the New Testament teaching. 

The problem still before us is whether the Holy Spirit 
is a person. The New Testament sets the case before 
us in three ways: first, the Spirit is presented as im- 
personal ; secondly, it is presented as personal ; thirdly, 
it is recognized as a person, but yet presented imper- 
sonally, that is, under the thoroughly familiar aspect of 
influence. The unqualifiedly impersonal representation 
prevails throughout the four Gospels up to the promise 
of the Paraclete at the institution of the Lord’s Supper, 
as recorded by John. Here the representation is ex- 
pressly and plainly personal. But occasionally even in 
this promise, and generally throughout the Epistles, the 
representation is of a person acting impersonally, that is 
as an effluence from God, as an influence on or in man. 


(1) Impersonal 

A more singular illustration of unwarrantable reac- 
tion by dogma upon exegesis can hardly be found than 
the interpretation of Holy Spirit as personal, in the 
trinitarian sense, when that title is used by Gabriel to 
Mary in the expressly impersonal language of the an- 


HE) ORT ? 13 


nunciation (Luke 1: 35). I say expressly impersonal 
because the angel’s explanation, “The Holy Spirit shall 
come upon thee,” is at once repeated impersonally in 
its parallel, “the power of the Highest shall overshadow 
thee.” Possibly the absence of the article before Holy, 
Spirit and before power strengthens the implication of. 
impersonality. But it is more to the purpose that to 
give here a personal meaning to a title which never 
before had such a meaning would work all sorts of con- 
fusion. For example, if Holy Spirit meant power of 
the Highest, the angel’s explanation was intelligible to 
Mary; but it was only bewildering if the name was per- 
sonal, for Mary had never heard of a two-fold or three-fold 
personality in the Godhead. Again, the New Testament 
nowhere else hints that the Third Person in the Trinity 
is in any sense father of the Second Person, or of Christ ; 
certainly not of Christ who indeed after his ascension 
was to send, not his Father, but the Holy Spirit from 
the Father (John 15 : 26). Once more, no reason can 
be found for regarding the Father as one Person of 
three, except that by the incarnation he was. manifested 
as Father of the Son. All the expressions which can 
be cited in favor of so transcendent a doctrine had their 
rise in this historical begetting. Finally, the only natu- 
ral way of taking the angel’s words to Mary, “Therefore 
that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be 
called the Son of God,” is the way which the Old Tes- 
tament affords and which beyond a doubt was accepted 
by Mary, namely, that God himself was about to generate 
Jesus through “the power of the Highest.”’ 

It is of some collateral interest to note that, at the 
period when the Apostles’ Creed was framed, belief in 


14 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


the Spirit’s personality had not been formulated, and 
therefore when this venerable symbol declares that 
Jesus Christ our Lord was “conceived of the Holy 
Ghost” it cannot be claimed that our understanding of 
this article was the early and purposed understanding. 
Such an understanding belonged quite likely to indi- 
viduals but not yet to the church. 

According to Luke (11 :13) the Lord assured his 
disciples that, on occasion, “their heavenly Father would 
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him,” but accord- 
ing to John (14 : 16, 17) the Paraclete was to be with 
them forever. No end of pains has been taken to 
reconcile the special and intermittent gift according 
to Luke with the steady and unbroken companion- 
ship according to John. How gratuitous! When the 
earlier assurance was uttered, Sfzvzt was invariably 
understood in its Old Testament sense as a timely but 
impersonal aid, whereas the promise in John is the 
very first plain indication that the Holy Spirit is to be 
a companion and therefore a person. The impersonal 
aid might be intermittent, it would necessarily be in- 
termittent so far as it was a special aid; but the com. 
panionship must be constant, it would necessarily be 
constant so far as it was a faithful companionship. 
Furthermore, the occasional impersonal aid might come 
from the constant personal companion, but it would 
never answer to mistake the occasionally needed and 
occasionally given azd for a Companion that came and 
went. Against such a mistake the sufficient safeguard 
is in holding fast to an established meaning until the 
time for a new meaning has come and that new mean- 
ing clearly seen. 


HE -OR?1T? 15 


If John had had in mind the Third Person of the 
Trinity could he have written that “the Holy Spirit was 
not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified’? (7 : 39.) 
It would have been untrue to write that the personal © 
Spirit was not yet. He had been from eternity. But 
that outpouring which every one then called the Holy 
Spirit was not yet. We cannot say in the springtime 
that the Mississippi is not yet, but we may perhaps say 
that the spring freshet is not yet. Indeed, the form of 
expression used by John is as spontaneous and accurate 
when taken impersonally as it would be awkward and 
incorrect if taken personally. Insist on the personal 
meaning and we concede to Sabellianism its best proof 
text. We say that the date for the manifestation of 
the unipersonal God under the temporary form of a 
seemingly personal Paraclete had not yet arrived because 
his manifestation under the form of a seemingly per- 
sonal Son had not yet been withdrawn. But this inter- 
pretation, so hostile to the common faith of Christians 
in all ages, is strictly debarred by the certainty that the 
familiar Old Testament meaning, zzfluence, was still the 
sole meaning of Holy Spirit. Of course something new 
was in John’s mind, something peculiar to the new era, 
something which had not yet begun. But the newness 
to which he referred in stating that “the Holy Spirit 
was not yet’’ was in the same sentence explained by 
him as the outflowing, refreshing influence of one who 
had satisfied his own thirst in Christ. It was to bea 
newness of effects, not a new conception of the Spirit 
who would produce those effects. 

The interest in these often discussed passages is one 
of technical exegesis and theology. Very practical and 


16 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


often distressing is the interest in our Lord’s warning 
against blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. This warning 
was recorded by all the synoptists (Matt. 12 : 31, Mark 
3:29; Luke 12:10). John in his first Epistle (5 : 16) 
may be referring to it as the “ sin unto death,” and, if 
the denunciations which we have read with awe in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews (6 : 4-6, especially 10 : 2g) are 
not intended for precisely the same offense, they Teter 
to a similar outrage. Although to “speak a word 
against the Son of man” may not be to “ tread under 
foot the Son of God,” to “ blaspheme against the Holy 
Spirit” is to “ do despite to the Spirit of grace.’ That 
fatal blasphemy has much in common with this final 
apostasy. But what we are here concerned with is the 
doleful misunderstanding which has led many unregen- 
erate persons into despair and not a few inconsistent 
Christians into insanity. It is a downright misunder- 
standing which has wrought all this mischief. The 
blasphemy that Jesus spoke of was not specifically 
against the Third Person in the Trinity. No one who 
heard Jesus could suppose it was. If his warning had 
a trinitarian meaning it had no meaning at all for the 
Pharisees. They had never heard of a Trinity. But 
in the Old Testament sense of words the Master’s 
warning had to their ears a terrible significance. They 
had heard of the Spirit which spake through the prophets. 
They knew of the signs which the divine effluence had 
given to attest the prophetic message and to carry out 
the will of God. These signs were repeated for the 
Son of Man. The miracles wrought through him by 
the Spirit, that is, by the divine energy, themselves 
declared the good news. But the Pharisees refused to 


HE“ORSIT? 17 


see the signs, they hardened their hearts against the 
good news, they dared at last to say that it was the 
devil and not God who wrought in Jesus. The good- 
ness of God could do no more; the stubbornness of 
man could no farther go. If this was the situation with 
his enemies they had fixed themselves in eternal sin. 
It was not because a Third Person in a Trinity had 
sacredness which did not belong toa First or toa Second 
Person. No such possibility was in mind or could be 
in mind, for it could not be suggested to any one present 
by anything said. Who knows but every sin is a sin 
against the warnings of the Holy Ghost? But it was 
the pitch of the offending and not the object of the 
offense that the gracious Teacher gave warning against. 
This is in effect our usual way of explaining what he 
said, but the proof that our explanation is correct is 
the fact that Holy Spirit then meant an impersonal 
energy of God which was at work in Jesus as it lad 
wrought in the prophets. 


The point now made, that the Old Testament mean- 
ing of Spirit prevailed in the Gospels up to the four- 
teenth chapter of John, is so far from customary that 
custom energetically reverses this view. It holds that, 
without having to wait for the “beatific vision ’’ in the 
skies, the senses of men distinguished the Persons of 
the Trinity at the baptism of Jesus (Matt. 3 : 16, 17). 
It is a traditional argument for the Trinity and the 
orthodox are few who have been able to forego its use. 
We ought really to have been on our guard against 
evidence so physically complete at a period so early. 


We gladly admit that the man Jesus was here certified 
Cc 


18 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


to be God’s Son, but it does not in the least follow that 
the divine in Jesus was personal before the incarnation. 
That true doctrine must be learned elsewhere from 
more direct testimony. As to the visibility of the 
Spirit, it is enough to ask what there is in the gentle 
nestling of a dove to indicate divine personality rather 
than divine enduement. Indeed, it would seem hardly 
suitable for a Person in the Godhead to be embodied in 
a dove, but divine influence might engagingly take this 
form. The later references of the New Testament to 
the event present it as an unction whereby Jesus was 
ordained (Acts 10 : 38) as Messiah. The Trinitarian 
interpretation not only anticipates a revelation but de- 
spoils the closing scene of our Lord’s baptism of its 
actual value as a publication. 


(2) Personal 


It has now perhaps been sufficiently shown that the 
Old Testament meaning of Holy Spirit prevailed in the 
Gospels up to the last Supper and its accompanying ad- 
dress, as given by John. But now a distinctly personal 
meaning asks for recognition. If that meaning was en- 
tirely new, the need of it was new. The situation was 
one for which the Master had not succeeded in prepar- 
ing his closest friends. Nowhe must go. But he would 
not leave them orphaned ; he would come to them. He 
would even dwell in them. But he would come and 
would abide in the person of another Paraclete. 

It is impossible to make the relations of the disciples 
to Father, Son, and Spirit separable relations. They 
already knew the Father in knowing Jesus, and Jesus 
would not be absent when the Spirit was present. But 


HE OR IT? 19 


it is equally impossible to fuse Spirit, Son, and Father 
into a single personality. If the Godhead is one per- 
son in the strictest sense, also in some valid sense there | 
are three Persons. 

What, then, is personality? As distinguished from 
beasts a person is a rational being. Among animals 
familiarly known the dog possesses intelligence that 
simulates reason and a capacity for affection almost sad 
to see. How many Christians love God as “old dog 
Tray” loves his master? But poor Tray, well as he 
knows English, cannot think abstractions; yet this is 
the least which reason has todo. Reason can also know 
intuitively, that is, by their own light, certain funda- 
mental abstractions which are called “ first truths.” It 
knows that there is moral difference and moral obliga- 
tion, If before Tray grew wise he sometimes had to 
feel ashamed, this was not because he was aware of any 
moral wrong in the misdoings of his puppyhood. For 
dogs moral wrong does not exist. It was only because 
he was sensitive to his owner’s opinion of him, and the 
vanity which made the beast amiable had been humili- 
ated by a scolding. But even if a bad man can be a 
sort of heathenish demigod to his devoted canine wor- 
shiper, persons alone are able to think of a Supreme 
Being who is infinite in all excellences, and as such is 
the Counterpart, Archetype, and Ruler of all lesser per- 
sons. Asa person, then, the Holy Spirit must be ca- 
pable of rational thought. 

As distinguished from other persons, considered, that 
is, aS a rational individual, a person must be aware of 
his own thoughts, feelings, and purposes. That is, a 
person is self-conscious. By virtue of self-conscious- 


20 THE -HOLY SPIRIT 


ness persons are the most thoroughly distinct of all 
beings. Perhaps no other beings need to be absolutely 
distinct. All others might imperceptibly blend at their 
margins, as air and ocean are intermingled in mist upon 
the sea. But persons are as entirely several and single 
as though each existed alone. When, therefore, we say 
that, in the strictest sense, God is one person, we mean 
that he is of essence and consciousness undivided. His 
substance is numerically one, and so is his selfhood. 
Nothing in either Testament throws any shadow or haze 
over the unipersonality of God in the ordinary meaning 
of the word person. This is the one truth as to his mode 
of existence which the Bible puts beyond all proper 
question. But it is not much less certainly, though less 
directly taught that, without three-foldness of substance, 
there is in the Deity a three-fold consciousness of self. 
The most ineffable truth of Christianity is that one 
divine Person is constituted of three quasi Persons. 
Any other statement is an evasion. Yet this is the 
unitary truth of Christianity, palpably the foundation 
of all its truths, 

Now the Holy Spirit exhibits every phase of self-con- 
sciousness, and so must be considered a person. Quite 
on the face of our Lord’s promise is a recognition of 
individuality in the Comforter parallel to his own. Jesus 
is one Comforter, the Holy Spirit is another.! So of all 
his doings. What Jesus in person had said, this the 
Paraclete would personally recall. He should be sent 


1 It is interesting and not unimportant that our Lord’s word for ‘‘an- 
other’’ is "aAAos and not érepos, The Comforter is another individual, 
but not an individual of another kind. Here is distinction without dif- 
ference, ‘Addos is precisely the word for another, if that other and 
Christ were distinct persons in one Godhead. 


HE OR IT? ZF 


as a witness to Christ ; and as the Father from whom 
and the Christ by whom he is to be sent, offer them- 
selves as persons, so the One they will send is person- 
ally offered. Such parity of personality is there be- — 
tween Christ and the Spirit that they can come only 
one at a time. Jesus must first go away; then the 
Spirit will come personally to convince the world, per- 
sonally to guide the disciples into the truth, personally 
to glorify Christ by receiving and showing what is his, 
as only a personal messenger may. The ages-old, im- 
personal way of thinking about the Spirit cannot hold 
out against the stress and strain of the new revela- 
tion. The worn thought-form is too well worn to clothe 
the fresh thought. If the Master’s own form of words 
yields for a moment to the universal feeling embodied 
in grammar, that spirit is without sex, and calls the 
Holy Spirit z¢, the stronger feeling for personality in 
the Paraclete draws his language into subjection; and 
so he says, “The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit which ... 
he shall teach you”’ (John 14 : 26). 

We noticed that a distinct person must have thoughts, 
feelings, and purposes all his own. All these the Holy \ 
Spirit has; and they are not the less his own because 
he adopts them all from the Father or from Christ. 
He teaches (John 14 : 26), therefore thinks. That he 
also feels Paul shows in warning the Ephesians that the 
Spirit may grieve (4 : 30), and in assuring the Romans 
that he joys (14:17) and loves(15 : 30). It is expressly 
an exercise of will when he commanded Philip to join 
the devout treasurer of Candace (Acts 8 : 29), or Peter 
to visit Cornelius (Acts 10: 19, 20), or the church at 
Antioch to commission Barnabas and Saul (Acts 13:2, 


22 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


4), or again and again checks the activity of the mis- 
sionaries (Acts 16:6, 7). Most explicit of all is the 
sobering and steadying message to the Corinthians, who 
were covetous of showy gifts, that the selfsame Spirit 
divides to every man severally “as he will” (1 Cor. 12: 
11). While, then, the personality of the Holy Spirit is 
less copiously and less cogently taught than any other 
article in the doctrine of the Trinity, it is conclusively 
set forth in the New Testament at and after the insti- 
tution of the Lord’s Supper. 


(3) Impersonal Personal 

We have now to notice a generally overlooked min- 
gling of old and new conceptions. Of the many refer- 
ences to the Holy Spirit in the Epistles the greater part 
show this peculiarity. It pervades the elaborate discus- 
sion of spiritual gifts in the First Epistle to the Corin- 
thians. Here the Spirit is recognizably personal, and 
yet shown under impersonal aspects. He distributes 
his gifts, indeed, as he will (12°: 1); but the-impwlse 
either to speak in unknown tongues or to prophesy in- 
telligibly must be regulated or even repressed, as though 
it were a wholly impersonal influence (14 : 26-33). 
This intermingling of the impersonal and the personal 
will be so obvious to all observant readers after their 
attention is once called to it in the Epistles, that we may 
turn to two cases of unique importance in historical 
books of the New Testament. 

Let us approach the great event of Pentecost with 
minds open to the possibility that the established Old 
Testament meaning of Holy Spirit is the meaning in 
the Acts; indeed, feeling certain that it is the meaning 


HE OR ITP 23 


here and everywhere else, unless there are decisive indi- 
cations to the contrary. The settled and familiar pur- 
port would leap to every mind. The burden of proof 
rests on any one who says it is not the real purport. 
But if we ought here to turn back to a simpler meaning 
than the one to which we have grown used, this earlier 
and neglected meaning will pour new light over the 
whole story, will cure inveterate misunderstandings, and 
remove their attendant perplexities. 

What leads up to Pentecost? Matthew (3:11), John 
(1 : 33), and Luke in the Acts (1 : 5), speak of baptism 
in the Holy Spirit. In Matthew and John it is pre- 
dicted by the Baptist; in the Acts it is promised by 
Christ. There is no reason to doubt that the baptism 
referred to in the prophecy of John before the ministry 
of Jesus began, is the same which was promised by 
Jesus as his ministry drew toward its close. If so, 
then the prophecy and the promise were fulfilled to- 
gether at Pentecost. It is unmistakably Luke’s mean- 
ing that the gift of that great day is the “ power from 
on high” which Jesus had told his disciples that they 
should receive “not many days hence.” 

Now John does not in any way inform us when the 
Comforter was tocome, or did come. He says nothing 
about Pentecost. The most he tells us is that, after 
Jesus rose, he breathed on his disciples and said, “ Re- 
ceive the Holy Spirit” (20 : 22). John could hardly 
regard this as the coming of the Comforter, because 
Jesus had not yet gone, but only as a symbolical repe- 
tition of the promise with its attendant authority to 
bind and loose. Without doubt, then, the promise of 
the Comforter was fulfilled at Pentecost. 


24 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_ We are thus warranted in maintaining, as we all do, 
that the Holy Spirit of Pentecost was the personal Para- 
clete of the Last Supper. But it does not follow that 
Luke in the Acts presents the Spirit as personal. We 
must obey the sadly slighted rule of biblical theology and 
allow Luke to interpret himself. If we permit him this 
right and flinch not, we shall find him far from repre- 
senting the Holy Spirit on that great day as personal. 
“Power from on high” which, according to the Gos- 
pel, they were to tarry for (Luke 24 : 49), “ power” 
which, according to the Acts, they should receive 
through the coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1 : 8) was 
precisely what the Old Testament led them to find in 
the Spirit of God. Luke’s account of what occurred 
explicitly and continually presents the Spirit as imper- 
sonal quite in the Old Testament way. Did he picture 
to himself and to his readers the baptism in the Holy 
Spirit (Acts I : 5) as an immersion in a Person or in an 
energizing flood? Was the power of the Holy Spirit 
which came upon the disciples, the power, to Luke’s 
mind, of a diffused Person or of a diffused influence? 
To the eyes of the amazed lookers-on the tongues of 
fire, and to their ears the foreign speech, were signs of 
a Spirit which filled the followers of Jesus (2 : 3, 4); 
but did any one there present think of that Spirit as a 
Person so distributed, or-not rather as a rushing, mighty 
wind filling the house, penetrating all who had been 
waiting there, and turning to lambent flame on the 
heads of all? 

The prodigy was at once explained by Peter; but 
mark the characteristics of his explanation. It made 
use throughout of Old Testament ideas, ideas which 


HE OR ITP 25 


his hearers would take in. For Peter the occurrence 
meant two things: First (2 : 16-18) it was a fulfillment 
of Joel’s prediction, not that a new gift would be granted, 
but that the old gift of prophecy would be extended to 
every age and class. Now prophesying was not traced 
by Joel to a person in a Trinity, neither was it so traced 
by Peter. For the rest Peter saw in the coming of the 
Holy Spirit an amazing and triumphant attestation to 
Jesus. God had approved him, while he lived among 
the people, by miracles, wonders and signs (2 : 22) ; 
and now that wicked hands had crucified and slain him, 
God raised him up, exalted him to his own right hand, 
and fulfilled his promise to Jesus by shedding forth 
what they saw and heard. In this last wonder there 
was no more indication or intimation of a personal 
Spirit’s agency than in the earlier wonders by which 
God had approved his Son; and among those earlier 
wonders there was nothing which any more needed, or 
was any more referred to a personal Spirit than there 
had been in the age which was now come to its close. 
We may be assured that the personal Spirit did all this ; 
but his personality was not evinced nor spoken of in 
connection with any of it. 

- What the pentecostal effusion meant for the church 
has been endlessly argued in behalf of various ecclesi- 
ologies. All has turned on assuming that this effusion 
was the first coming of the personal Paraclete. The 
question then is, was his coming at Pentecost a coming 
once for all? We may here say that, considered in the 
only light in which it appears in Luke’s account, that is, 
considered as an impersonal enduement of power for 
the disciples, and as an impersonal but convincing cre- 


26 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


dential for Jesus, there is no reason to doubt that the 
pentecostal gift may be repeated, in behalf of one per- 
son or of many, as often as they need or God wills it. 
The recognition that Old Testament conceptions sur- 
vived under New Testament forms, that there can be 
an impersonal representation of the Holy Spirit, al- 
though his personality is not unknown, enables us to 
understand the more or less frequent presentation of 
the Spirit of God by certain New Testament writers as 
the Spirit of Christ. Even Peter, who is not looked 
to for metaphysical phases of doctrine, speaks of the 
Spirit of the ancient prophets as “the Spirit of Christ 
which was in them” (1 Peter 1:11), Here Peter 
apprehends the pre-existence of Christ, his identity 
with the Holy Spirit, his official superiority to the Spirit 
by which he inspired the prophets, and, in all these 
ways, his divinity, a noteworthy series of truths for this 
particular apostle. John, whose ways of thinking, as 
well as temperament, seem to have been antipodal to 
Peter’s, John who is at his ease when his mind moves 
in its highest range; who in the proem to his evangel 
presents his faith about Christ in strongly contrasted 
aspects, the ultra speculative and spiritual aspect with 
the most nearly crass and material; who here has it 
that the divine Self-expression, the eternal Word, does 
not merely shine through but Jecomes not merely human 
but flesh (1:1, 14); John, who in his First Epistle 
makes the eternal life place itself within reach of 
almost every human sense (L512)-3 whouinsists that 
the Son of God came in order to offer the true God to 
human understanding, and that it was all one to be in 
the true God and in his Son Jesus Christ (5 : 20); this 


HE OR ITP 27 


bold and tender teacher, who will not let his fusion of 
extremes be resolved by spiritualizing, but calls any one 
that would do this antichrist (4 : 3); this deep-seeing, 
if not wide-ranging apostle, this inspired and accurate ~ 
evangelist, cannot report to us our Lord’s farewell 
promise of the Comforter without doing it in winsome 
paradox, making Christ assure the Eleven in one breath, 
“I will give you another Comforter,” and “I will come 
to you” (14 : 16-18). When Jesus said, “I go away,” 
his next utterance was, “and I return to you” (14: 
28). This is not the final but an immediate return, 
not a transient greeting in the body by resurrection, 
but a permanent indwelling by the Spirit. A few 
moments ago he said, “I go to prepare a place for 
you” (14 : 2), but now he makes it “Abide in me, and 
Lin you’ (15:4). He-even alleges, ““IfI go not.away 
the Comforter will not come” (16:7); none the less 
what we have cited is enough to assure us that, as John 
understood his loved Master, when the Spirit comes 
Jesus comes. 

The exposition of the Holy Spirit’s offices is most 
amply given by Paul in the twelfth and fourteenth 
chapters of his First Epistle to the Corinthians. Here 
what the Spirit does and the purpose of his doings, not 
what he is, are constantly before the mind. No meta- 
physical hint obtrudes. It is simply the Spirit of God, 
active in astonishing and ample ways for the mutual 
profiting of believers. But when Paul treats not of the 
relation which the Holy Spirit enables Christians to 
assume and maintain toward one another, but of the 
bond that the Spirit establishes between the believer 
and God, then the commanding conception which Paul 


28 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


held of Christ claims its rights, and the very Spirit of 
God is with explicitness and emphasis described as the 
Spirit of Christ. No exposition of this fact could be 
complete which did not involve such a study of Paul’s 
mind as would lend us his point of view and upward 
look, and such a study of his heart as would make us 
glow with his own adoration for the Son of God, whom 
he was commissioned to preach as the Saviour of men. 
We must be contented with referring to a few signifi- 
cant utterances. 

The prolonged anthem of victory in the eighth of 
Romans has it that “the law of the spirit of life in 
Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and 
death” (8 : 2); that we are “in the Spirit, if the Spirit 
of God dwell in us,” and that this Spirit of God is the 
Spirit of Christ, without which “we are none of his” 
(ver. 9). These things, as Paul assures the Corinthians, 
“God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2 : 10) 
by “the Spirit that searches the deep things of God” 
(ver. 10). These things we also can search, because 
“we have the mind of Christ” (ver. 16). The Spirit 
of God which dwells in us is here called “the mind,” 
because it is engaged in the mental operation of know- 
ing. The brethren in Rome were assured that God 
will make our mortal bodies live by his Spirit that 
dwells in us (8: 11); the Corinthians, that “the last 
Adam” is that “life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15 : 45). 
In the Second Epistle to the Corinthians Paul’s lan- 
guage is as terse and precise as language can become; 
namely, “The Lord is the Spirit” (3 : 17), ‘o 68 Kvpcos 
tO Ilvedud eater. We need only mention his dcéa that 
it is by the Spirit of the Lord we are transformed into 


HE! OR IT? 29 


the image of the Lord (2 Cor. 3 : 18); that it is because 
God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our heart we 
can cry Abba, Father” (Gal. 4 : 6); and that he expects 
his trials to turn to his account through the prayers of | 
his dear Philippians, “and the supply of the Spirit of 
pesusuCurist i( Phil; ths 19). 

The Corinthians needed instruction about spiritual 
gifts, and to this need we owe the fullest exposition of 
these gifts which the New Testament affords. In the 
course of that exposition Paul for once presents the 
Spirit as a person who “divides to every one severally 
ashe deliberately wills’ (1 Cor. 12:11). For the 
rest, these chapters leave unnoticed the personality, 
and attend only to the activity, of the Spirit as divine 
energy. But still the evidence is complete that Paul’s 
habitual conception was that the Spirit of God is the 
Spirit of Christ. Of the five distinct references to the 
Comforter in John, references so striking that they 
seem to be the theme of the entire discourse in which 
they occur, only one identifies the Holy Spirit with 
Christ, and all recognize that he is a person; but the 
passage which identifies the Comforter with Jesus (John 
14 : 16-18) is the only passage of the five which does 
not state that the Spirit's office is to testify of Christ. 

The remarkable conjunction which we have noted of 
the Spirit’s distinctness as a person and identification of 
him with the personal Christ, may be explained by dog- 
matic theology as illustrating that the Three Persons of 
the Godhead are of undivided essence. . But dogmatic 
theology is not in this case biblical theology. There is 
no indication that John or Paul had in mind any such 
metaphysical explanation of the difficulty ; nor indeed 


30 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


that they felt the need of any explanation, or the pres- 
ence of any difficulty. This fact refers us back at 
once to conceptions familiar to both apostles. If there 
was no difficulty to either of them, it was because their 
statements fell in with obvious facts and could be 
made in familiar terms. The usual conception that the 
Spirit of God is in itself the vital energy of God, and 
in its outer relations is that energy going forth in influ- 
ence, this conception precisely fits the case before us. 
The Spirit which energized and directed the life of 
Jesus as a servant and prophet, now, after his service is 
at its close, according to John, and his humiliation is 
past, according to Paul, is known to be his own divine 
energy, his own divine Spirit. In fact, from the point 
of view which the old covenant afforded, so soon as the 
apostles had learned to look upon their Master as divine, 
there was no other way of regarding his Spirit than as 
the Spirit of God, nor the Spirit of God as other than 
the Spirit of Christ. If the distinct personality of the 
Holy Spirit is obscured by such a presentation of the 
case, it is but the New Testament’s characteristic and 
customary withdrawal of that metaphysical aspect of the 
Trinity into the background. Paul and John no doubt 
sometimes thought of the Spirit of God as a third divine 
Person, but not, by all signs, habitually; certainly not 
in the passages which we have been studying, and which 
make him expressly the Spirit of the Second Person incar- 
nated, or, closer still to the actual thought of these apos- 
tles, make the Holy Spirit simply the Spirit of Christ. 


An intermingling of impersonal with personal views 
of the Holy Spirit is found in the solitary passage on 


HE OR IT? 31 


which is built the metaphysical doctrine of the proces- 
sion of the Spirit. ‘When the Paraclete is come, whom 
I will send unto you from the Father, the Spirit of truth 
which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of 
me” (John 15: 26). The phrase, “which proceedeth 
from the Father,” is but a parenthesis; but it bears the 
load of the occult and audacious doctrine that the inner- 
most relation of the Holy Spirit to the Father is set 
forth by breath, which is the etymological meaning of 
the word “spirit.” God, this philosophy hath it, from 
eternity breathes forth the Holy Spirit, and this keeps 
them both identical in substance and distinct in per- 
son. How prodigious a metaphysic to be so facilely 
substituted for the entirely familiar, entirely unpreten- 
tious, unmetaphysical, and habitual Old Testament way 
of thinking that the Spirit is an effluence from God and 
an influence on man. 

It ought, as mere matter of course, to be admitted 
that the Old Testament view might possibly recur at 
this point, and that it would be entirely at home, until 
forcibly displaced, at any point. How plain then should 
be the evidence for an ontology of the Godhead so 
strange, so incomprehensible, so almost weird as the 
eternal production of the Third Person by breathing ! 
How proper and how reverent our demand that such a 
significance be not attached to the very words which 
would be used to state the Old Testament view, unless 
there is the most cogent reason for finding in those 
words now a meaning which they had never borne be- 
fore, and which they are never again employed to pre- 
sent! The whole difficulty is made possible by failure 
to obey the rule of biblical theology as to the established 


32 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


meaning of terms. Obeying that rule, we find this 
classic passage presenting the Spirit in the new guise 
of a personal Paraclete; while a passing parenthetical 
clause for a moment recalls the by no means metaphys- 
ical but quite familiar picture of an impersonal influence. 


An answer to the question whether the Spirit of God 
ought to be called He or It must be three-fold: 

1. If thought of as the Paraclete, the Spirit is thought 
of as a person, and should be called He. 

2. If thought of as divine energy or influence, the Spirit 
is thought of as impersonal, and should be called It. 

3. If thought of as the divine essence, the inmost, 
vital reality in God, the Spirit is then thought of as indeed 
personal, but also as sexless, and in strict grammatical 
propriety is to be called It. I say strict grammatical 
propriety requires this neuter pronoun in thinking of 
the divine Spirit as spirit, because usage is uniform in 
the case of the human spirit when conceived in the 
same way. The spirit of a man is the essence of the 
man, and therefore personal; but it is immaterial, and 
therefore sexless. Theological propriety may seem to 
require that grammatical propriety be overridden ; but 
it will be only as the good people called Quakers turn 
thee into a nominative, and glorify God by saying “Thee 
does,’ or ‘“‘ Thee does not.”’ 

It ought not to be overlooked that the doctrine of a 
Third Person in a Trinity does not in the least express 
itself in calling the Spirit, as such, He. The Person 
thus referred to is God, unipersonal, not tripersonal. 
The Spirit thus referred to is the essential Godhead, 
not a third aspect of that essence. Thus, when Paul 


HE OR IT? 53 


asks, “ Who among men knows the things of the man 
but the spirit of the man, which is in him?” he is not 
implying that a man’s spirit is a second person distin- 
guishable from the man himself. Paul means that the 
spirit of a man is the self-knowing, unipersonal man ; 
but as spirit has no sex, Paul calls the man’s self- 
knowing spirit which. Then he adds, “So also the 
things of God no one knows, but the Spirit of God”; 
and he does not mean that the spiritual, self-knowing 
essence of God, though personal, is a distinct person in 
the Godhead. Directly, also, as spirit is sexless, Paul 
calls the divine Spirit whzch (1 Cor. 2 : 11, 12). 

The strictest doctrinal consistency would not seem, 
then, to require that the orthodox invent new laws of 
human speech. For if they do this it will not do any 
good, it will not give expression to their trinitarian faith. 
Any Jew, when thinking of the divine Spirit as the 
divine essence, thinks of the Spirit as the personal God ; 
and yet, so thinking, calls the sexless Spirit It; while 
the trinitarian when thinking of the divine Spirit as the 
divine essence, still is thinking of the Spirit as the per- 
sonal God, even though he overlooks the Spirit’s sex- 
lessness, and violates propriety of both grammar and 
thought by speaking of /t as He. Really, the soundest 
trinitarian need not object to the pronouns used in this 
very connection by Christ and by Paul. 


CHAPTER IIJ 
THE ANSWER OF LIFE 


F a good Christian has dealings with God, he may 
| naturally look for indications that the Spirit of 
God is with him. The question just now is, can our 
lives afford evidence that the Holy Spirit is a person? 
May we know by experience, as those twelve men at 
Ephesus did not, “whether there is any Holy Ghost,”’ 
in the New Testament sense of the term? Jesus taught 
that the world does not know the Comforter, and can- 
not receive him because it does not see him. “But ye 
know him,” said Christ, “because he dwells with you, 
and is in you” (John 14 : 17). 


1. Known as In Us? 

What sign does he give that he is present in person? 
What sign does our neighbor give? Only an impres- 
sion upon our senses. We become aware of our neigh- 
bor’s nearness by touch; or light reflected from him 
may strike the eye; or air waves, which we call his 
voice, may beat on the ear, as waves from a passing 
steamer beat against the small boat in which we are sit- 
ting. In any case we know that somebody is close by 
only through effects which are sensibly produced in 
ourselves. If certain familiar groups of effects occur, 
we say that our well-known neighbor is at hand. 

How, then, may we be certain that these effects are 
not produced in us by our own fancy? Sometimes 

34 


THE ANSWER OF LIFE 35 


effects similar to these are so produced. A light glows 
in the eye, because I am pressing the eyeball. Sounds 
annoy the ear, when a disease or a drug is giving a fillip 
to the auditory nerve. We may seem to see, hear, and 
feel our neighbor—all in a dream. How, then, can we 
tell that sensations of the broad day are not a dream? 
If we are only inferring outside causes for inside effects, 
the assurance which we feel has all the precariousness 
of an inference. To be candid, we cannot prove that 
we sense realities, we can only know that we do. We 
cannot prove any first truth, but we may intuitively 
know it. A theory which explains away knowledge ex- 
plains itself away. - That self and not-self exist is a first 
truth. We know each in knowing the other. We do 
not know self as affected, merely inferring not-self as 
cause; but we know self affected, just when we know 
not-self affecting. 

Jesus said that we should know the Holy Spirit as 
within. My neighbor makes an impression on me from 
without ; what if he could impress me from within? 
Would I then have to say that I do not so know him at 
all? If the Holy Spirit effects results in me, why may 
I not claim as truly to know him as though the effects 
were produced on the outside of me? The world does 
not know him because it sees him not; if it saw him, 
would it know him better than we can know him by his 
indwelling ? 

The answer is obvious; but it does not cover the 
whole ground. The question yet remains, whether my 
knowledge is knowledge of the Spirit’s personality, or 
only of his impersonal influence. And to deal with this 
issue will be to open a still more radical issue. At the 


36 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


outset we ought to admit that we cannot know the three 
Persons of the Trinity apart in consciousness. Roman 
Catholics wisely postpone this “beatific vision”’ to the 
heavenly estate.. It may be that the offices of the 
Trinity may be distinguished even now; but this is not 
to say that the offices are so distinct as to justify the 
claim, “I can tell that this is the Father and not the 
Spirit, or the Spirit and not the Son, at work in me.” 


2. Known as Distinct from Us? 

Now the more radical question arises whether I can 
actually so much as distinguish the Holy Spirit from 
myself. Surely, I do not distinguish two personal 
spirits busy in my breast, my own spirit for one, and 
the Spirit of God, or of Satan, for the other. Surely, 
every instructed Christian must say, “Although I am 
well aware of strange movings within me, I recognize 
them, and wonder at them, as movings of my own spirit. 
Inasmuch as I perceive nothing but my own psychoszs, 
I am conscious of only my own psyche. I rejoice to 
infer, but can no more than infer, that the good Spirit 
of God has begotten this heavenly life in my poor soul,” 
For, in truth, there is a difference between knowing the 
physical and knowing the spiritual. I know the physical 
not-me as affecting the physical me; but the spiritual 
me I know only as affected, without distinguishing the 
spiritual not-me which causes the effect. 

Since, then, we cannot distinguish the Holy Spirit 
from our own spirit, we are unable with psychological 
propriety to claim immediate perception of the Holy 
Spirit’s personality. The phenomena of any man’s 
spiritual experience, no matter how extraordinary, how 


THE ANSWER OF LIFE 37 


entirely unprecedented, how startling, and how unac- 
countable, would fail to justify even so much as beliet 
that they were produced by the Spirit of God, if the 
New Testament had not promised this. Otherwise we 
would be obliged, in all propriety, to ascribe them all to 
the recuperative energy of the human will, or to the 
delusiveness of human imagination. Transactions in 
the soul of a man, quite as remarkable as any ordinary 
works of the Holy Spirit, are now and then effected by 
a sudden clearing of moral vision, and a sudden response 
of self-control, or by prompt and wise submission to the 
control of others. But devout Christians are warranted 
in taking the position that their own lives correspond to 
the New Testament account of the matter, illustrate 
the promised help, and corroborate the doctrine of the 
Helper’s personality. 

We need not leap to the conclusion that, while we 
ourselves have no means of distinguishing between our 
own spirits and the Spirit of God, inspired men, once 
upon a time, had such means. It is not that their con- 
sciousness furnished a doctrine of which our conscious- 
ness is incapable; but that they and we received from 
Christ himself—that is by objective revelation, not from 
subjective inference—the promise of the Spirit's offices. 
He was to regenerate, this Nicodemus was told; he was 
to be an unfailing Helper, this was the final promise to 
the faithful Eleven ; and the promise of these offices was 
substantiated partly by miraculous and external signs, 
which in those days followed the imposition of hands, 
but chiefly and permanently, for us and for them alike, 
by experience of the new birth, and by “fruits of the 
Spirit’ suitable to the new life. 


38 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


. Whether or not new truth on this subject was re- 
vealed during apostolic days, gifts of the Spirit then 
abounded; they were led into knowledge on other sacred 
matters; and we can hardly venture to believe that their 
illumination and insight is surpassed by our own. Folly 
lies that way. 

We find the New Testament teaches the Spirit’s per- 
sonality, ascribes to him distinctly personal activities, 
and our experience gathers the fruit of these activities 
for ourselves. Even in setting up so moderate a claim 
we must not overlook that for the doctrine of person- 
ality in the Spirit we shall have to depend on general 
representations of the New Testament rather than 
specific texts. In the Epistles sanctification is much 
more treated of than regeneration, and more definitely 
ascribed to dealings with the personal Paraclete. When 
Jesus said that we must be born of the Spirit, he did 
not expect Nicodemus would understand it of a per- 
sonal Spirit, for such a Spirit was as yet unheard of ; 
but Nicodemus would know him to be speaking of an 
energy from God contrasted with energy of “the 
flesh”? (John 3 : 3-8). Similarly when Paul writes to 
Titus concerning “the washing of regeneration, and 
renewing of the Holy Spirit,” he at once describes that 
Spirit quite impersonally as “ poured out on us abun- 
dantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour”’ (Titus 3:5, 6). 
This but illustrates the statement, made above, that the 
personality of the Holy Spirit is less copiously taught 
in the sacred Scriptures than any other article in the 
doctrine of the Trinity. And there is an unmistakable 
correspondence between the amount and the need of 
authoritative statement under this head. The person- 


THE ANSWER OF LIFE 39 


ality of the Spirit would be conspicuous, if his offices 
were all conspicuously personal. 


We make, then, a two-fold admission; namely, that 
the personality of the Holy Spirit is not directly recog- 
nizable in experience, and that it is with comparative 
scantiness, though adequately, taught in the New Tes- 
tament. But such an admission, however fair, may not 
unnaturally give pain to pious souls. Let us, then, 
make haste to add that for any deficiency on the point 
of doctrine there is a large, a much larger compensa- 
tion in point of practice. This is true as to the repre- 
sentations of the New Testament, and much more as to 
the teachings of experience. 

Touching the New Testament’s habit of viewing the 
case may we not feel sure that the impersonal “ power 
of the highest’’ which begat Jesus would be adequate 
for our rebegetting? Or, imagining the utmost profit 
which could come to us if the Bible continually kept to 
the front the personality of the Spirit, what would we 
find that advantage consisted in except to imply what 
is now directly taught, namely, effective divine influ- 
ence over us? Fancy, if the fancy is pleasing, how 
keen delight an explicit and steady assurance of the 
‘Spirit’s personality might afford; fancy how much 
courage before men and fidelity before God might have 
been derived from a way of putting the facts different 
from the way followed in the New Testament, if one 
has the temerity to indulge in such a fancy ; and would 
there not bea net loss from such a change? I think it 
will so appear as we consider the light which experience 
throws upon the doctrine. Let us see. 


40 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_If we knew the Holy Spirit as a person, that is, if we 
knew him as apart from ourselves, we would not truly 
know him at all. He is our Helper; he could not so 
help us then. What would it be worth to us if the 
notable movements of the life within us were his move- 
ments, not ours? Do we need that the Holy Spirit 
should feel grieved about our sinfulness, should yearn 
for holiness in us, should arouse his will to serve God, 
should himself repose on God in faith, or glow toward 
our fellow-men with love? For us is it not the im- 
portant matter that we ourselves should do all this, and 
that the Spirit’s part should be to cause us so to do? 
If we only recognized him as personally distinct from 
us, not ourselves as influenced by him, we would have 
to miss the best which he now does for us, and the 
most we yet need to have him do. 

Some years ago a large steam engine all of glass was 
exhibited about the country. When it was at work 
one could see the piston and the valves go; but no one 
could see what made them go. When steam is hot 
enough to be a continuous, elastic vapor, it is invisible ; 
when it is cool enough to be seen, it is nothing but so 
much fog, a tea-kettle cloud, a damp and depressing 
aggregate of innumerable, minute, and quite separate 
drops. It has lapsed from one of the mightiest and 
most serviceable agents of man into the weakest and 
most useless form which water can take. It is nothing 
but mist. The silly fellow who could deny that he 
knew anything about steam, because he did not see it 
in the cylinder, would be denying that he knew the one 
thing in steam most worth knowing, the mysterious 
energy which runs our machinery, and now and then 


THE ANSWER OF LIFE 4! 


flings the top off a mountain. Thus pitiful the testi- 
mony to the Holy Spirit yielded by the Christian life, if 
we had to know the Spirit as a person, a being within 
us apart from ourselves. In this case, as in case of so » 
many Christian doctrines, the realities which bear the 
test of scrutiny are worth infinitely more than all the 
dear fancies that melt away under its gaze. - 


CHAPTER< IV. 


THE TRINITY 


HE problem of the Trinity need not be discussed, 
but ought to be noticed in a general study of the 
Holy Spirit. . 

We pass by the attempts to construe a divine ontology 
out of a human ontology, for these attempts contradict 
all ontology, human and divine. It is true that we are 
conscious of self only because conscious of that which 
is not self. And so, if God from eternity was both 
Father and Son, he might from eternity exercise that 
self-consciousness without which he could not seem to 
us a person. But why the Spirit was needed as a means 
of communication between Father and Son it is not 
easy to see unless the First and Second Persons are 
less spiritual than the Third, or the Third less personal 
than the Second and First. Similar difficulties are met 
in arguing triplicity in unity from the love which is of 
the very nature of God. 

The New Testament as practical, not theoretical, 
gives us only the “economic Trinity.” It expounds 
the divine “ housekeeping’”’ when his dwelling-place is 
man. That God is one was taught the Hebrew people 
by disastrous experience of polytheism and by the self- 
commending truth in monotheism. We too are so 
constituted as to respond to this doctrine with spiritual 
joy and to abhor any impairment of it. We experience 
its truth. But we may also trace in the Gospels the 

42 


THE TRINITY 43 


growing conviction that Jesus was divine until he be- 
came an object of worship, and in the Epistles we find 
him credited as the author of a divine salvation, the 
source of a life which is no other than life in God. I 
think we need not hesitate to say that Paul here and 
there breaks through his habits of speech and fairly 
calls Christ God (Rom. 9: 5; Titus 2 : 13 ; comp. with 
the essentially Pauline Epistle to the Hebrews, 1 : 8). 
John opens his Gospel with stating that the Word was 
God and at its close records an out and out confession 
of his Lord’s deity by Thomas (1: 1; 20: 28). There 
was not, there is not, any standing up against the divinity 
of Christ on the part of those who have intimate deal- 
ings with him. No one now denies the divinity of the 
Holy Spirit. It could be only a freak to interpret the 
Bible as meaning that the Spirit of God is a creature. 
And the offices which the Spirit has to fulfill are so 
clearly personal that his personality always presses itself 
into the Christian’s conception. There is one God, and 
yet Father, Son, and Spirit are alike divine and personal. 

Now why has not the church left the matter here, 
where the New Testament left it? Why has it not 
been satisfied, why is it not to-day satisfied, with an 
economic Trinity, no more, no less? It could not be. 
It never could, it cannot now. How avoid asking about 
Christ all the questions, one after another, which have 
arisen concerning him? He himself started the ques- 
tion, Whom do men say that I am? And whom say 
ye that I am? Well, then, how afterward evade like 
questions about the Holy Spirit? _ 

It is precisely because the divine economy revealed 
facts as to God which can be grouped and viewed 


44 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


together that we must attempt such a grouping and 
view. We agree that in the ordinary meaning of the 
word a person has substance all his own and a con- 
sciousness that he is distinct from all other beings. In 
this usual sense God is one person and only one. The 
Old Testament had much ado to get it believed and the 
New Testament never in the least calls the uniperson- 
ality of the Godhead in question. But when we find 
that both Christ and the Spirit are conscious of selfhood 
as well as of divinity, knowing that they must not be 
regarded as distinct gods, are we not shut up to the 
conclusion, when we put all these facts together, that 
in the one undivided Godhead there is a three-fold per- 
sonal distinction? This is going to the extreme verge 
of a possible metaphysical definition. Every effort has 
been made to stop short but in vain. If the mind flies 
away it is inevitably drawn back. It cannot stay away 
from the position that God is one and indivisible, while 
Christ and the Spirit are somehow personal and properly 
divine. It is what they do that makes us think so. It 
is their offices which give the doctrine of the Trinity its 
perennial vigor. Now their offices are distinctively 
Christian, and so the trinitarian theory of how Father, 
-Son, and Spirit are related ata to the very genius 
of Christianity. 

This theory need not affirm more than identity of 
substance and distinctness of selfhood. Reason is con- 
founded by what it must affirm, but reason need not 
attempt any explanation as to how these relations in the 
Godhead come to exist. It need not allege eternal 
generation of the Son, either immanent or voluntary ; 
it need not agree to eternal procession of the Spirit, 


THE TRINITY 45 


whether from the Father only or from the Father and 
the Son; but Christian experience is so explicit about 
the facts and reason so persists in putting the facts to- 
gether that we are forced to hold, if we hold to practical 
Christianity, that the Three are God and that God is 
One. Or, if we look to the statements of the New 
Testament writers, which are all held close to what they 
know and we know by experience, so significant are the 
terms in which they describe the economic Trinity that 
the question is whether the minds of those writers dis- 
covered none of the ontological implications of their 
own language. 


CHAPTER V 
THE WAYS OF THE SPIRIT 


1. The Issue 

MPORTANT doctrinal implications go with an an- 

swer to the question whether the Holy Spirit works 
directly or by an instrument. The straitest sect of 
Calvinism holds that regeneration is without means, 
because the carnal mind cannot accept the truth. An 
incautious view of sanctification teaches the direct up- 
lift of the soul without the use of means into a new 
plane of living. It is just as natural that an opposite 
school of theology, which emphasizes freedom of the 
will, should regard the human will as co-operative with 
the Divine Spirit, and the Divine Spirit as operative 
through the truth. 

Each side has its merits. A comprehensive view 
would be more accurate than either of the partial views. 
The Holy Spirit acts in both ways, immediately and 
mediately, on different occasions and for ascertainable 
reasons. When those occasions are determined, and the 
reason for the Spirit’s ways is understood, then a degree 
of order and even unity is reached in the explication of 
this confused and confusing branch of our theme. 


2. Occasional 


At the grand epochs the Spirit of God acts directly. 
Such epochs are the creation of the worlds, the estab- 


lishment and re-establishment of the theocracy, the 
46 


THE WAYS OF THE SPIRIT 47 


founding of Christianity, and the final consummation. 
At each of these periods the Spirit’s work is miraculous. 
The primal creation was a stupendous miracle. The 
theocracy was set up, and kept up, by mighty miracles. 
The begetting of Jesus was the supremely gracious 
miracle, while miracles corresponding to this were 
needed and were wrought in order to lay well the 
foundations of Christianity. The final state will be 
introduced by a miracle which has no successor, the 
miracle of the general resurrection. All these grand 
miracles are familiarly accredited by Scripture to the 
Spit OfuGod (cf, Gen. 15°25 1sa.63316; Zech. 476; 
Luke 1°35; Heb.2:4; Rom. 8:11).  In:performing 
them natural agencies may or may not be used. In any 
case God lays his hand either on these agencies, or on 
the object on which the recognized miracle is wrought, 
and by his direct efficiency subdues both things and 
forces to his purpose. It was the sheer power of the 
Spirit which “called things that are not as though they 
were’”’ ; which provided the supernatural aids of the ex- 
odus, and credentials of the prophets ; which begat the 
Son of God, showed by many infallible proofs whose son 
he was, that his apostles were God’s messengers, his 
church God’s people, and which at length will destroy 
the last enemy. No instrument did or could intervene 
between the divine energy and the miracle. What his 
energy did to an instrument was the miracle; what it did 
through an instrument brought the miracle to light. 


3. Ordinary 


But if extraordinary occasions required direct inter- 
vention of the Spirit, and this we must in all candor not 


48 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


only admit but maintain, it is equally clear that for his 
ordinary purposes, for his habitual and ruling ends, if 
we may call them so, the objects for which the mission 
of the Comforter is a continual and recognized provision, 
he works through the instrumentality of the truth. 
His service for men may be sumined up in two familiar 
words, regeneration and sanctification. “It is the 
Spirit that quickeneth” (John 6:63); but Paul tells the 
Corinthian Christians that they were “ begotten through 
the gospel” (1 Cor. 4:15); Peter says the scattered 
saints were “begotten again by means of the word of 
God” (1 Peter 1:23); and James has it that the 
«Father of lights . . . of his own will begat us by the 
word of truth” (I : 18). 

Sanctification too is “of the Spirit” (1 Peter I : 2); 
but also, as Paul states the matter, “in belief of the 
truth” (2 Thess. 2:13); and Peter lays the process 
open in a way to satisfy a modern theologian: “ye have 
purified your souls in obeying the truth, through the 
Spirit” (1 Peter 1: 22). Peter, one dares to say, had 
not forgotten the prayer of our Lord for his disciples, 
« Sanctify them in the truth: thy word is truth ” (John 
17:17). It ought to seem to us quite natural that Jesus 
again and again should style the Holy Spirit ‘the Spirit 
of truth” (ohn 14°175, 15 3 265386 83), 

So to apply the truth is suitable to the Spirit who re- 
veals it, and to man for whom it is revealed. All eftects 
on character are produced through the mediation of 
ideas. We live for that which we have thought about. 
We care for and act for nothing else. No emotion stirs 
the soul, no resolve, good or bad, is taken by the will, if 
all ideas are wanting. The cold touch of thought warms 


THE WAYS OF THE SPIRIT 49 


the heart, as potassium is set on fire by an icicle; and 
nothing but thought can do this. And so— 

The continuous, all-inclusive office of the Holy Spirit 
ts to minister the truth, either by revealing or applying 
it. This is now his way. This is his way in all that. 
in this life we may look for from him. When we are 
dead in sins, and he quickens us; when we walk after 
the Spirit, and the righteousness of the law is fulfilled 
in us; when he helps our infirmities and makes inter- 
cession for us; when we have access unto the Father 
by him; when we enter the kingdom of peace and joy 
in him; when the earnest of the inheritance becomes 
ours by his sealing; when we grow unto an holy temple 
in the Lord and are builded together for an habitation 
of God in the Spirit; when the brotherhood, being 
zealous of spiritual gifts, seeks to excel to the edifying 
of the church; when the church, built up and com- 
pacted, sends forth the gospel in power and in the Holy 
Ghost and in much assurance; whensoever and so long 
as the Spirit and the bride shall say come, and while 
men that are athirst continue to come, until the end 
comes, and he that raised up Christ from the dead 
quickens our mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwells in 
us, and Christ finally delivers up the kingdom to God, 
and the ministry of the Spirit is ended, from his first 
up to his last office for us, it is the Spirit’s good and 
wholesome way to achieve all that he does through the 
ministry of the truth. 

I hope no one will think this belittles the work of the 
Spirit, or will fancy that he knows of a better way. 
As we found that the Spirit does most for us by setting 


our-own faculties at work, not by figuring in our con- 
E 


50 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


sciousness as a person apart from ourselves, so his best 
method of setting our faculties to their work must be 
one which is in harmony with the laws of our mental 
and moral constitution. If he does not act in accord 
with these laws, he acts against them. Mental and 
moral laws can neither be superseded nor suspended. 
The result of doing it in the one case would be insanity, 
in the other case it would be sin. Let us once clearly 
see, and we are not likely ever to forget that the high- 
est results are normal results. We shall then be well 
satisfied to let the Holy Spirit do what he does for us 
by ministering to us the truth ; that is, through the 
operation of right thoughts; that is, normally. The 
most momentous, and possibly the most abrupt, con- 
version which Christianity has known was that of Saul 
of Tarsus. It was accomplished by the sudden revela- 
tion of new truth. So obstinate in error was Saul that 
it took literally “a knockdown argument”’ to persuade 
him. His soul could be reached only by overpowering 
his body; but by the truth thus physically conveyed 
he was at once convinced and transformed. He did 
not confess sin, nor profess faith; he asked: ‘ What 
shall I do, Lord?” In his phrase to the Galatians, 
“he obeyed the truth” (3:1); and ever after, through- 
out that apostolic service in which historic Christian- 
ity began, it was “by manifestation of the truth that 
Paul commended himself to every man’s conscience 
in “the -sight:.of -God ”* (2 Cor, -4-72)e" ™ His? speech 
and his preaching was in demonstration of the Spirit 
and of power’; and thus it came to pass, for us as 
for Corinthians, that “faith may stand in the power of 
God; * (1 Cor: 2:24, 5). 


THE WAYS OF THE SPIRIT 51 


4. The Explanation 

It ought now to be plain why the Holy Spirit wrought 
directly at the grand epochs, and why between them 
he works by the instrumentality of truth. In the 
work of creation, of founding the Hebrew nation, of 
redemption, and of final consummation the Spirit of God 
acts upon_matter ; throughout the intervening periods 
he acts upon mind. Even when his office was to set 
up the kingdom of God among men, miracle was requi- 
site, and miracle is an effect wrought on physical objects. 
But it was, is, and always will be germane to effects on 
rational spirits that these should be produced by means 
of convictions. Now a conviction is a felt thought. 
To impress the right thoughts, to make them felt, is an 
office than which no other could be more suitable to 
the Holy Spirit, or more vitally important to men. If 
the instrumentality of truth is excluded from operations 
upon nature alone, it is indispensable to changes 
wrought in souls. 

I confess that for some time after recognizing the 
ministry of truth as now the all-comprehending office 
of the Holy Spirit, it was not without reluctance that I 
found ascribed to him activities in which the truth had 
no part. So appropriate to the Spirit of God is it to 
reign over minds and in hearts, that his direct action 
upon matter appeared less fitting, and even incongruous. 
But it could not be disguised that the Bible attributes 
to the Spirit works in the physical sphere, How ought 
this seeming anomaly to be understood? How could 
it be explained? It relieves the difficulty in part to 
note that these interpositions in the physical sphere 
were but occasional, while the Spirit’s operations in the 


52 THE, HOLY SPIRIT 


moral sphere are constant. But those occasional inter- 
positions came in groups; and after this has been 
noticed, the problem rapidly finds its solution. These 
groups of direct acts upon nature are found, as we have 
seen, at the great turning-point in the history not only 
of this world, but of all worlds. At supreme crises 
special exhibitions of the supreme Ruler’s power were 
not only justifiable but necessary. They were miracles ; 
and he who refuses to consider the possibility of mira- 
cles forgets that man is body as well as spirit, that his 
soul can be reached through his senses, that he needs 
to perceive how God, a being supreme at least in 
power, is demanding his immediate attention. Above all, 
the objector fails to take into account how far God is 
willing to go when necessary, in his concern for men. 
Note these facts, and miracle becomes credible, its 
entire absence incredible. If then miracles are ascribed 
to the Spirit of God, it is in cases when, although the 
Spirit may be identifiably the personal Paraclete, he is 
figuring as a divine energy. God would call attention 
to himself, and.at that juncture a miracle is his call. 


Giving full recognition, then, to the ministration of 
truth as the regular function of the Holy Spirit, as the 
function for the sake of which every occasional function 
is but a transient and subsidiary provision, we may now 
employ this generic office for the correction of persistent 
and not harmless errors, for the intelligible exposition of 
detailed offices, and also as a principle of classifying 
and unifying the operations of the Holy Spirit ages ago 
with his activities in modern times. 


GHALPTER? Vi 


THE TWO ERAS 


E are justified in holding that we live in the 
era of the Holy Spirit. That the Spirit is in a 


new and dominant relation to the people of God is 
certified by the prediction of John the Baptist that, 
unlike himself, Jesus would baptize in the Holy Spirit ; 
by Christ’s own promise of an enduement of power 
through that baptism; by his plain statement that the 
Comforter’s mission could not begin until he himself 
had withdrawn ; by his assurance that the presence of 
the Comforter would be more expedient for them than 
his own; by putting off their witness to him until the 
new relation to the Holy Spirit had formally begun ; 
by the change which Pentecost made in the apostles ; 
by the important place that spiritual gifts held in the 
minds of the early Christians, and the careful discus- 
sion and instruction concerning these gifts which was 
left by Paul; finally, by the distinctly spiritual charac- 
ter of Christianity as contrasted with Mosaism. This 
new character is due primarily, it is true, to the fulfill- 
ment of types in the Antitype; but secondarily to the 
administration of Christianity by the Holy Spirit. 

The ministry of the truth turns, of course, on the 
truth to be ministered. If the range of its applicability 
in ancient times was narrow, the Spirit’s service then 
was narrow; if its present range is wide, our opportu- 
nity for spiritual good is equally wide. tr 

53 


54 THE. HOLY SPIRIT 


1. The Old Era—Ministry by Symbols 

Under the old dispensation its scope was hardly so 
restricted that it could not serve as instrument of the 
new birth. God seems never to have been without a child 
among men. What may have been that “ better thing 
provided for us,” of moment so great that the ancient 
worthies “apart from us should not be made perfect ”’ 
(Heb. 11:40), we perhaps cannot satisfy ourselves, 
certainly not others; but men could ever “come to 
God,” because they could “ believe that he is, and that 
he is a rewarder of them that seek him out” (Heb. 11: 
6). The “elders obtained a good report,” and their 
pious songs are not only the utterance of renewed 
hearts, but the fittest utterance ever made. The great 
cloud of testifiers tell us what faith can do for men who 
run a race, and assure us that, in ‘the race which is set 
before us,” truth is the guide of faith. 

But for those far-away times the truth was embodied 
in symbols. So embodied, truth is at a great disad- 
vantage. Religious truth set in symbols is for priests, 
or at most for a priestly people. Ceremonies were for 
such only as had ceremonial fitness; and to be ex- 
cluded from all part in the ceremonies was to be ex- 
cluded from a share in the truth. The prevailing 
thought about the only true God was that Jehovah 
cared for his people Israel, and was hostile to all Gen- 
tiles. The religion according to whose standards a 
single race was pure, and all other races defiled, could 
not but make “the heathen rage,” leaving them to ex- 
pect that the Lord would “ have them in derision, and 
vex them in his sore displeasure.” No abatement, in a 
few Hebrew thinkers, of this stern exclusiveness ever 


THE TWO ERAS 55 


was at home in the Hebrew spirit, nor in the Levitical 
system. The feeling of aloofness on the part of the 
Chosen People made them detestable to other peoples ; 
and the Levitical system could never impart to Gen- — 
tiles an assurance that the truths, locked up in cere- 
monies which they were not allowed to share, were, 
after all, truths intended for the uncircumcised. | In 
thus restricting the applicability of the truth, the relig- 
ion of Jehovah so far shut out the Holy Spirit from the 
minds of “aliens to the commonwealth of Israel.” With 
strictest deference to facts Paul might call upon Gentile 
Christians in Ephesus to remember that they had been 
“strangers from the covenants of promise, having no 
hope, and without God in the world” (Eph. 2 : 12). 

A symbolical religion is hardly less disastrous, in the 
long run, to those who take part in its observances. 
The more a symbol embodies, the less it imparts. The 
more it means, the less it tells) We have greater 
reason to dread the religious use of a crucifix than of a 
cross. It is likely that intelligent heathenism has 
sometimes intended no worse by its images than Rome 
now intends. It would not bid people accept idols as 
gods, but only as hints at what the gods are. If the 
idols are grotesque, the hint is the plainer. How dread- 
ful must be those superhuman beings which look like 
that, or, ‘worse still, actually are like that. Yet the 
propensity to take the image for the object imagined, 
the sign for the idea signified, has not been successfully 
withstood by any symbolical religion. It is often the 
case that the more faithful the devotee, the more dele- 
terious the religion. This was true even of Judaism. 
Paul stood out against imposing its laws on Gentile 


56 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Christians as a perversion of the gospel. ‘The hand- 
writing of ordinances,” he said, “ was against us. Christ 
had blotted it out.” What could the Holy Spirit accom- 
plish for those very religious Hebrews who had fallen 
into the way of doing what they had to do, and think- 
ing no more about it? His help had to be as meagre 
as the truth he could make them think. Phariseeism 
is a natural outgrowth of Levitical zeal. Legalism 
sinks inevitably into formalism, and formalism is fatal 
to spirituality. When it is taken up with tithing all 
manner of herbs, it finds little zest in weightier matters. 

The priesthood can never be counted on to save a 
formal religion from formalism. The sacred ministers 
of a sacrosanct ceremonial will be the last to lighten its 
burdens or simplify its ritual. To diminish “the offices ” 
would be to minify their own office, and not even Paul 
could be expected to do that with his apostolate (Rom. 
11:13). Sacerdotalism goes with sacramentalism. Like 
horses harnessed in span, each must drag the other, 
unless the other will pull his own share. One can 
hardly be priest to his household, serve at “the family 
altar,” and “say grace before meat,” yet never happen 
upon the lurking suggestion as to each of his pious 
observances, that, when it’s done, it’s done with. Could 
we at all understand how the nineteenth and one hun- 
dred nineteenth psalms sing as they do about the law 
of the Lord, if the “law which converteth the soul, if 
the testimony which maketh wise the simple, if the 
statutes which rejoice the heart, the commandment 
which enlighteneth the eyes,” all of them “ more to be 
desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter 
also than honey and the honeycomb ’’—if all these re- 


THE TWO ERAS 57 


ferred to the Levitical prescriptions about purifications, 
and restrictions about meats? Surely the psalmist had 
more than that code in mind when he ended his song 
with the lofty and simple aspiration, “ Let the words of | 
my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be accept- 
able in thy sight, O Jehovah, my rock and my re- 
deemer (19: 14)... It is\ not, then,:to’ the ceremonial 
law nor to its priests that we must look, if we would find 
what was the most and best that the Holy Spirit could 
do under the old dispensation. This we find by turning 
to quite another type of Old Testament Scripture. 


2. The Old Era—Ministry by Prophecy 

The prophetic writings, dealing with particular situa- 
tions and correspondent to New Testament Epistles, the 
Psalms, wisdom literature, and histories, which are for 
alltime, these set forth thoughts, and show us how rich 
materials the Holy-Spirit-provided and had at command 
ages ago for his service to human souls. Types and 
ceremonies our Lord could fulfill and set aside; but in 
fulfilling the demands of this other gift of inspiration, 
he sanctified it for perpetual use. The old Bible was 
the tutor of his childhood, the counselor and support 
-of his manhood, and the Spirit which gave it has never 
given anything better, in its line, for man’s instruction 
and support. The Psalms are still the model hymns of 
love and praise, the ideal prayers for forgiveness and 
help, while Isaiah is evangelical as Paul, and even ten- 
derer than John, The Hebrew people enjoyed a devo-~ 
tional literature, much of which, for largeness of view 
and persuasiveness of appeal, equals any that the Holy 
Spirit has given since Pentecost, and places the ancient 


= 


58 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


people on an equality with us, except as the meaning of 
their own Scriptures was opened and fulfilled by the 
mission of Christ. In this last particular the greatest 
of their prophets was less than the least in the ci 
dom of heaven. 

How well the prophetic writings lend themselves to 
the service of the Holy Spirit becomes yet more evi- 
dent when we take into account the essentially pro- 
gressive nature of thought, and the often startling 
independence exhibited by the prophets. Religious 
thought is fertile. Ideas lead on. An idea dwelt upon 
seems more and more important. It suggests impli- 
cations, and it suggests too, its own opposite. The 
more we emphasize it to ourselves, the more distinctly 
we see its hostile converse. But the humblest truth 
has mighty allies and noble kindred. One who is in- 
timate enough with a humble truth will by and by find 
himself in great company. Hold before the mind any 
just conception of divine things, and as one gazes at it 
it grows transparent. Vistas open through it. The 
outlook is backward, forward, and to every side. The 
idea becomes telescopic, and the vision is limited only 
by the dimness of one’s own eyes. Let whoever doubts 
this try a steady gaze through the magic glass of a 
true thought. 

A real thinker is bound to be radical. He may not 
deny what other thinkers have reported. He too may 
find the very things that they have found. No way- 
farer in these Holy Lands need travel all the way alone. 
Yet every diligent and reverent student of religious 
truth feels that, for himself, he must trace its roots as 
far as he can. Therefore he is a radical, however con- 


THE TWO ERAS 59 


servative ; indeed, is truly conservative when radically 
conservative. Radicalism is the only trusty conserva- 
tism. If one takes up a position without having gone 
thoroughly into the subject, some fact which he has 
overlooked may be used for his overthrow. The proph- 
ets rarely flinched. If God had not inspired them, 
still as the loftiest thinkers of their times they would 
have been leaders of men’s spirits. But God inspired 
them. It was he who led them on and on; and so his 
Spirit by his prophets leads us on, and ever on. If we 
have come to a stand, we first dismissed our Leader, 
and ceased to think. 

How stirring was the leadership of the “ Spirit of 
Christ which was in the prophets” we may be able to 
estimate when we find them scouting the law, and cry- 
ing up that true and loyal obedience to God himself, 
which legalism never sprang from nor led to. Their 
attitude was often the reverse of that which was uni- 
formly taken by the priests. No priest could have found 
it in his heart to decry “the law of a carnal command- 
ment,” even for the sake of exalting “the power of an 
endless life” (Heb. 7:16); but when Paul or the 
writer to the Hebrews does this, he but repeats in the 
new era what the powerful impulse of the Spirit led the 
prophets of the old era to do again and again. Samuel 
was the first great prophet after Moses, the only one 
like Moses in effecting a complete political revolution, 
for he unified the nation under a king. It was a long 
step toward modernity; but nothing more antique is 
found in the Old Testament than Samuel’s wrath against 
Saul for sparing Agag, king of the Amalekites, and all 
except the “vile and refuse.” “What meaneth this bleat- 


~~ 


60 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


ing of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen 
which I hear?” He will not listen to Saul’s excuse that 
he had himself destroyed the Amalekites, but “the peo- 
ple took of the spoil to sacrifice unto Jehovah thy God.” 
And Samuel said, “To obey is better than sacrifice, and 
to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15 : 22). 

' Ata later day what a wrench to regard for the law 
must have been experienced by “Asaph the Seer” before 
he wrote the fiftieth Psalm : 


Hear, O my people, and I will speak ; 

O Israel, and I will testify unto thee: 

I am God, even thy God. 

I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices ; 

And thy burnt offerings are continually before me. 
I will take no bullock out of thy house, 

Nor he-goats out of thy folds, 

For every beast of the forest is mine, 

And the cattle upon a thousand hills. 


If I were hungry, I would not tell thee ; 
For the world is mine, and the fulness thereof. 
Will I eat the flesh of bulls, 
Or drink the blood of goats ? 
Offer unto God the sacrifice of thanksgiving ; 
And pay thy vows unto the Most High. 
(Ps. 50 : 7-14.) 


In what essential does this differ from David’s mzse- 
vere 2? 


Thou delightest not in sacrifice ; else would I give it : 

Thou hast no pleasure in burnt offering. 

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : 

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. 
(ESS5 tak, 1) 


THE TWO ERAS 61 


This in turn only echoes what is quoted by the 
New Testament from another psalm concerning Christ, 
though the psalm itself was far from limiting it to the 
Messiah. It is a psalm of thankfulness and of a trust 
which is bold to search the mind of God: 


Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in ; 

Mine ears hast thou opened : 

Burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. 
Then said I, Lo, I am come ; 

In the roll of the book it is written of me : 

I delight to do thy will, O my God ; 


Yea, thy law is within my heart. 
(Ps. 40 : 6-8.) 


Will some one say that these psalms looked to the 
final sacrifice, that they placed on the Lamb of God 
the trust which no Levitical lamb deserved? But there 
is no such intimation. Will another maintain that the 
Levitical ceremonies imparted those ultimate truths 
which here came to utterance? Nothing like this is 
hinted, but the reverse. These hymnists may actually 
owe to Levitical sacrifices the truths in the name of 
which they repudiated those sacrifices; but they repu- 
diated them. They saw only contrast. The law and 
the prophets were not always of one mind. The psalm- 
ist prophets set at naught the law. Their independence 
sometimes amounted to antagonism. 

It is noteworthy that such is not the attitude of the 
Epistle tothe Hebrews. This Epistle puts Christ above 
the law, but makes what he does the law’s consumma- 
tion. This is the salient point in the Epistle’s discus- 
sion concerning the annual Day of Atonement. The 
high priest, left alone in the temple on that great day, 


62 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


went into the Holy of Holies, and by sprinkling the 
mercy seat with the blood of a sin offering, made atone- 
ment for the people, made good all arrears, provided for 
every “error of the people” not otherwise provided for 
(Lev. 16). . But Christ, the true high priest, entered for 
us the true tabernacle, and “by his own blood obtained 
eternal redemption for us” (Heb. 9:12). In the an- 
cient ritual of the Yom Kzppur the exclusion of all but 
the high priest from the tabernacle signified that his act 
took the place of all that others could do. In the rit- 
ual of our redemption, when Christ “by one offering 
perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Heb. 10: 
14), he did away with the law by fulfilling it. So that 
the law itself provided for tearing down the dividing 
wall between Jews and Gentiles. But the psalmist saw 
nothing of this sort. 

Did those whom we more familiarly call prophets ? 
Not Isaiah, nor Jeremiah, nor Hosea, nor Micah. Thus 
Isaiah opens his prophecy : 


To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? 
saith Jehovah. Iam full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the 
fat of fed beasts... When ye come to appear before me, who 
hath required this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring 
no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me. . . 
Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease 
to do evil ; learn to do well. . . Come now, and let us reason to- 
gether, saith Jehovah : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall 
be as wool (Isa. 1 : 11-18). 


Hear then Jeremiah : 


I spake not unto your fathers, nor commanded them in the day 
that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt 


THE TWO ERAS 63 


offerings or sacrifices : but this thing I commanded them, saying, 
Hearken unto my voice and I will be your God, and ye shall be 


my people,( jer. 7. > 227123). 
Hosea is sententious : 


I desire mercy and not sacrifice ; 
And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. 
(Hosea 6 : 6.) 


But it is Micah who wrote the typical and best re- 
membered challenge for men disposed to make a fetish 
of their rites: 


Wherewith shall I come before Jehovah, 

And bow myself before the high God ? 

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 
With calves of a year old? 

Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, 
With ten thousands of rivers of oil? 

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, 
The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 


He hath showed thee, O man, what is good ; 
And what doth Jehovah require of thee, 
But to do justly, and to love mercy, 
And to walk humbly with thy God? 
(Micah 6 : 6-8.) 


It is not a question here whether this was sheer 
legalism. We need not consider whether it describes 
any other righteousness than that which Moses de- 
scribed, “The man which doeth those things shall live 
by them” (Rom. 10:5). Christ had not yet been set 
forth as “the end of the law for righteousness’ (Rom. 
10 : 4). But these prophets, one and all, insist on 
righteousness. They place it where Christ in the Ser- 


¥ 


64 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


mon on the Mount places it, in realities, not in forms, 
and lay, like him, in ethical truth an indispensable basis 
for spiritual well-being. It would be even truer to say, 
alike of these prophets and of the great Teacher, that 
they made spiritual well-being to consist in righteous- 
ness. In their bold, unwavering independence of Mo- 
saism, and in their equal faithfulness to the essence of 
all true piety, they equipped the minds of men with 
truth by which the Holy Spirit could mold their lives 
and lead them toward the full revelation in Christ. 
Like the Sermon on the Mount, they tell us not so 
much how to attain the true life, as what the true life is 
when attained. 


3. The Old Era—Ministry by Wisdom 


But the precise functions of priesthood and prophecy 
as to the truth, with the corresponding opportunity thus 
afforded to the Holy Spirit in Old Testament times, be- 
come yet clearer when contrasted, as both are, with a 
third class of ideas and method of presentation. These 
are found in the so called “ wisdom literature.” It isa 
form of literature which exhibits the correspondence of 
the Hebrew mental habits to those of other Eastern 
peoples, and sometimes reveals rather close relations 
between the chosen nation and another quite alien in 
race and genius. In a general way the wisdom books 
are the least religious, the most worldly in the Old Tes- 
tament, and have secured correspondingly the lowest 
degree of reverence. Merely historical writings may 
have a more distinctly religious importance and be de- 
cidedly more of prophetic type. Indeed, the more im- 
portant histories were credited to a prophet. 


THE TWO ERAS 65 


The Orientalism of the wisdom writings appeared 
now and then in the fable form, as in Jotham’s witty 
apologue of the trees in search of a king (Judg. 9 : 7-15). 
It was quite at home in the shrewd and often caustic 
proverbs. An infusion of the very different Greek way 
of thinking is recognized by some in that highly poetical 
passage of the book of Proverbs which represents Wis- 
dom as the first creature of God and his joyous com- 
panion, but one that especially delighted in, and was 
eager to teach, the sons of men (Prov. 8). The wisdom 
writings took up the great problem’ of suffering and 
retribution. Hence the majestic epic of Job and the 
gloomy musings of Ecclesiastes. The wise men, after 
the captivity, devoted formal study to the law and built 
up fences around it. They figure in New Testament 
times as lawyers and scribes. Their writings remain to 
us among the Old Testament apocrypha and in the vast 
compilations of precepts and commentaries known as 
the Talmud. Whatever the theme of a wisdom writing, 
whether secular or religious; whatever its form, con- 
densed or expanded; whether proverb and precept, 
fable or epic, commentary or speculation, it was the 
product of intense intellectual activity. The law pre- 
scribed forms of approach to God, prophecy brought a 
message from God, wisdom studied out the lessons 
which might be extracted from revelation and from life, 
Law, when most benignant, conferred a priestly bene- 
diction ; prophecy, at its loftiest, saw the face of Jehovah 
and listened to his voice, but wisdom reflected, weighed, 
and defined. Its offices were much more akin to those 
of Christian exegesis, theology, and ethics than were 


those of the prophet. The writer of Ecclesiastes called 
% 


66 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


himself the Preacher, and such he was. He said, “All 
is vanity”; “he was wise, and still taught the people 
knowledge”; “he pondered ... and sought to find 
out acceptable words,” like his present-day successor, 
yet he could show himself sane and faithful enough to 
reach this “end of the matter: fear God and keep his 
commandments; for this is the whole duty of man’”’ 
(Eccl. 12:13). The law might make its devotee super- 
stitious ; devotion to prophetical writings could lead the 
mystic into fanaticism; wisdom would try to keep the 
people prudent and orthodox, but tended to leave them 
self-complacent and rationalistic. Yet it is easy to see 
that by the wide scope of its topics wisdom provided 
for the touch of the Holy Spirit upon all the phases 
and functions of human life. 


4. The Transition—Christ had Better Go 


In comparing the old and new eras our notice is chal- 
lenged at the outset by the words of the Master, that it 
was better for the Comforter to come than for himself 
to stay, and that the Comforter could not come until 
Christ had gone (John 16: 7). These comparisons lay 
open all that is essentially unlike in the earlier and 
later work of the Spirit, as one era passed into the other. 

The explanation frequently offered for the expediency 
of the Master’s going is that his bodily presence would 
have localized and narrowed Christianity as disastrously 
as the claims for Jerusalem and Gerizim narrowed by 
localizing two rival forms of the ancient religion; that 
it would have proved an intolerable inconvenience to all 
who love the Lordand a serious bar to the development 
and spread of the new religion ; indeed, that so long as 


THE TWO ERAS 67 


we are in the flesh the visible presence of Jesus on 
earth would tend to set up idolatry of his body and to 
carnalize the faith itself; that, in spite of all, it would 
make the kingdom of Christ a kingdom of this world, — 
the weapons of our warfare carnal, and set the church 
wrestling against flesh and blood. There is no need to 
dispute the accuracy of this picture, but the evils which 
make it look so dark show why it is expedient for us 
that Christ has gone away, not why it was well for the 
loved Eleven that he should go. To find out what 
benefits he had in view for them we need not draw on 
our imaginations nor look so far away as this explana- 
tion asks us to. 

The advantages which the Lord promised are pre- 
sumably those which his followers afterward experienced, 
and, to learn what advantages they reaped, we have only 
fifty days to wait. The apostles were to be witnesses 
to our Lord’s resurrection, but the ascension must com- 
plete the resurrection. To him earth would have re- 
mained a prison house. And how could the disciples 
give convincing testimony that he had risen? If Jesus 
were still on earth every hearer would insist on seeing 
the Lord for himself. It would be equally disastrous 
for him to offer himself as a spectacle to the world or 
refuse to show himself. Every step taken to make sure 
would be a profanation. It was enough that he said to 
Thomas, “Reach hither thy finger.’ To Pharisees, 
Sadducees, and Herodians he must say, as he did to 
Mary, “Touch me not.” 

How completely reversed the situation when the 
disciples saw him ascend to where he was before, and 
when the Holy Spirit, according to the promise which 


68 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Jesus had received from the Father, came to testify that 
God had made the Crucified both Lord and Christ. 
His witnesses might now declare him to be “the Son 
of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, 
by the resurrection from the dead.” Now they could 
testify, otherwise they could not. They entered, there- 
fore, upon the most glorious mission ever confided to 
men. This was the first fruit of the Lord’s going and 
the Spirit’s coming, namely, they could testify to the 
fact of his divinity and resurrection. 

That Jesus had risen and was divine did not include 
all the Good News. It was the fundamental matter of 
fact, the historic basis on which Christianity rests. 

The second benefit from the Saviour’s going and the 
Spirit’s coming was that the apostles now began to 
apprehend and appreciate what the mission was on 
which Christ came. It was an advantage which the 
Lord himself had pointed out. Three of the four an- 
nouncements of the Paraclete which the Master’s last 
discourse contains make him a teacher. ‘The Com- 
forter,” said Jesus, “shall teach you all things, and 
bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I 
have said unto you”’ (John 14 : 26); “He shall testify 
of me” (15 : 26); “ He will guide you into all the truth. 

. He shall receive of mine and show it unto you” 
(16); 13,-14)...- The, Lord ‘had’ foretold his crucifixion 
(Matt. 16 : 21-23) and in different forms declared the 
purpose of it (Matt. 20 : 28; 26:28; John 6: 51), but 
only to fill his disciples with amazement (Mark 10 : 32) 
and sorrow (John 16 : 6), to provoke their protest 
(Matt. 16 : 22), and, by confusing their minds, so to 
weaken their courage as that, when he was arrested, 


THE TWO ERAS 69 


they fled in dismay (Mark 14:50). Even atter he 
rose they still assumed that his mission was to “restore 
again the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1 : 6). How much 
time it took them after the Spirit came to comprehend — 
the astounding fact that Christ was their redemption 
and their life or in what way they arrived at this knowl- 
edge we are not told. There is no hint of an additional 
revelation on this point except to Paul, and we are left 
to take for granted that knowledge of what constitutes 
the Good News came to them through insight which 
the Holy Spirit afforded when he recalled and they 
meditated on the teachings of the Lord and all that 
had befallen him. 

This second advantage of the Holy Spirit’s coming 
was the possession of the message which they were to 
carry ; and it illustrates how far beyond computation is 
the importance of the Spirit’s all-inclusive office to min- 
ister the truth. 

A third, and to the disciples personally a crowning 
expediency in the Master’s going and the Spirit's com- 
ing, was the transformation of their characters. Possibly 
it would be better to call it their development on a scale 
so large as to look like a transformation. This has be- 
come a commonplace in discourses about the apostles. 
It is set forth with freshness and beauty in the first 
sermon of Hare’s “Mission of the Comforter.” The 
archdeacon likens it to the benefit that a boy obtains 
‘when he passes from under his father’s roof to school” 
—not to what we call a “day school,” but to what the 
English know as a “public school,” like Eton or Rugby, 
where a lad takes his place in the crowd at what seems 
to Americans a tender age. Here he is “trained be- 


7O THE “HOLY SPIRIT 


times for the habits and duties, the energy and endur- 
ance of active life, and . . . may learn to look upon 
himself, not merely as a member of a family, but as 
bound by manifold ties to his fellow-men ; so that the 
idea of a State, and of himself as a member of the State, 
may gradually rise up within him.” Such words, ad- 
dressed as these were to university men, then under the 
training so nobly advocated, might well impart an idea 
of the apostles’ gain in manliness and sense of responsi- 
bility, in capacity for initiative and persistence of effort. 
All of which was seen at its best in Paul, who knew 
only the instructions of the Holy Ghost, and who en- 
joyed in full the blessedness of those “who have not 
seen, and yet have believed.’ Hare does not too 
strongly insist on the advantage to character; but 
hardly satisfies us that it was the advantage which the 
Master had in mind when he said it was expedient for 
him to go away. The gain of character was a real but 
a subsidiary, a third result ; while the first and second 
places must be accorded to the new revelations which 
Jesus promised: concerning himself and his mission 


(Jobn 21341. Q 6D 7.2.5 5-10 25). 


5. The Transition—Christ Must Go 

We turn to the companion statement, “If I go not 
away the Comforter will not come unto you” (John 
16:7). Could not heaven spare them both at once? 
Would the universe itself come toa stand, if the Son and 
the Spirit, who are the agents of God in cosmic affairs, 
were at the same time taken up with human affairs ? 
Would it even embarrass the triune Godhead, if the 
Second and the Third Persons were sent together on 


THE TWO ERAS 71 


missions that subordinated them both, and so far seemed 
to dissociate them from the Deity? The boldest spec- 
ulations have been indulged, and are almost invited by 
this occult saying of our Lord. Without pretending to 
sound its depths, we may notice facts which would 
justify it, but which one hardly dares to say are its 
interior meaning, or perhaps even thought of by our 
Lord. What he meant he did not tell us, and we will 
not venture to guess. 

Yet so simple a thing may be said as this: the Com- 
forter is a substitute, and substitution for any one re- 
quires the displacement of that one. The Father would 
send the Comforter in the name of Christ and to recall 
all that Christ had said (John 14 : 26). Whatever gain 
there might be in having the Master’s words brought to 
remembrance, and by his authority, that is, in his name, 
all this advantage of meditative mood and pensive, lov- 
ing insight comes after the adored Teacher’s work is 
finished, and he has disappeared. 

A second consideration is, I think, admissible. Jesus 
at first promised that he would pray the Father to send 
the Comforter (John 14 : 16), but afterward said he would 
himself send the Comforter from the Father (John 15 : 
26). So closely associated are the offices of the divine 
‘Persons that Jesus could both say: “If ye shall ask 
anything in my name I will do it” (John 14 : 14); and 
« Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he 
will give it you” (John 16:23). When Jesus answered 
prayer, the Father was not excluded from answering it ; 
and so the Comforter, whom the Father would send, 
Jesus also would be sending. But all this was to follow 
the ascension. While the Son of God remained on 


Vee THE HOLY SPIRIT 


earth, he remained a servant. It could hardly belong 
to him during his humiliation to dispatch the Spirit of 
God on errands. Without measure the Spirit was be- 
stowed on him, and gave him power ; it was not yet for 
him to empower the Spirit. 

Finally, some insight into this mysterious utterance 
is possibly afforded by the great fact which, we may 
hope, will clear up for us many perplexities concerning 
the Holy Spirit; namely, that his general office is to 
minister the truth. ‘The truth” into which the “Spirit 
of truth” would guide the disciples (John 16 : 13) was 
“the truth as it is in Jesus,” the truth about his becom- 
ing a man, about his life with men, his crucifixion, his 
resurrection, and his glory, the truth, in one word, about 
his mission. But the fruits of his mission could not be 
imparted by the Holy Spirit until that mission had been 
accomplished. If any method had already beén at- 
tempted and found unavailable, it was the assertion in 
advance by prophets and by the Master himself that 
redemption would be wrought through him. In vain he 
told his disciples that he must die, they would not hear 
to it; or why he must die, they could see nothing but 
calamity in it. It was idle to say that he laid down his 
life in order that he might take it again; the victory 
was hidden by the defeat. They simply could not be 
brought to face the need of his sacrifice, until it was 
too late to object any longer; and even then, as we 
know from all the early addresses of Peter which are 
recorded in the Acts, they saw in the crucifixion only a 
crime. At length they saw that the death of our Lord 
was a sacrifice, although a sacrifice offered by wicked 
hands, and as an act of uttermost disobedience. They 


THE TWO ERAS 73 


saw this at last, and were prepared to see it. Before he 
died they thought too much of him to believe that he 
must be crucified for their salvation; but after he had 
submitted to death, and shown that the grave could 
not hold him, then they thought so much more of 
“him, that in the end his cross could be regarded as 
nothing less than a sufficient propitiation for the whole 
world. The Holy Spirit found them ready at length 
for his instructions. } 

Both of these deep and dark sayings, namely, it was 
expedient for the disciples that the Lord should go away, 
and until he went the Comforter could not come, occur 
in one sentence and have one explanation, namely, to be 
taught the Good News in full by the indwelling Spirit is 
better than to enjoy the bodily presence of Jesus. What 
the Spirit was able to do for men before and after the 
Lord’s ascension would be determined by what the Spirit 
was able to teach. Let it be said again: The ministry of 
the truth turns on the truth to be ministered. 


6. The New Era 


It is easy now to characterize in few words the era 
of the Holy Spirit. All that has been said either con- 
cerning the Spirit’s general office or concerning the era 
before Pentecost, distinguishes by implication the new 
era. In every age it is the Spirit’s office to minister the 
truth. Under the old dispensation that ministry was 
hampered by the embodiment of the truth in symbols, 
but helped by the liberation of the truth in prophecy 
and song. The gospel dispensation completes this pro- 
cess. If any part of Christian truth is set forth by our 
two Christian ordinances, and all the Christian realities 


74 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


are thus set forth, the truth is not restricted to this ex- 
pression. It is published at large in the gospel of 
God’s grace. We are indeed warned of a bad possibil- 
ity when we find the ordinances perverted into myste- 
ries, and such effects ascribed to them by the supersti- 
tion of Christians as were ascribed to Levitical and 
Pharasaic observances by the fanaticism of Jews. In 
this case the rivalry of priests and prophets begins 
again. Once more the priest, encumbering and dis- 
guising the truth in forms, lays a little restraint on the 
operations of the Holy Spirit; and then once more the 
prophet, inspired of the Holy Ghost, denounces the 
subjection of the gospel to ordinances, sets the doc- 
trine free and provides for the Spirit a renewal of his 
own dispensation. 

The abolishment of the ancient ceremonial was nec- 
essarily the abolishment of all distinctions which turned 
on that ceremonial. The Jew could no longer have any 
advantage ; which is in fact to say that he was no longer 
at adisadvantage. But Christianity did more than abol- 
ish the ancient formulas; it fulfilled them. All the 
truth in them thus became an inheritance in common. 
This universality of our faith is its fundamental distinc. 
tion. It is the most conspicuous provision which has 
been made for the Spirit’s activity. And on all who will 
accept the truth, that is, who will open their hearts to the 
dealings of the Holy Spirit, he confers every privilege 
which Israel could claim. They are God’s peculiar peo- 
ple. They are in the kingdom of heaven. They are the 
chosen, the called out, the ecclesia, the church. As such 
the Spirit makes his home in them. The peculiar peo- 
ple of God are the peculiar abode of his Spirit, 


THE TWO ERAS 75 


If it were asked what is the salient characteristic of 
Christianity, an adequate answer would be, the offices 
of Jesus Christ administered by the Holy Spirit. It re- 
mains for us to consider in the following chapters some 
ministrations of the Holy Spirit in his own especial era. 


CHAP PER Vil 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 


1. The Evidence 
ATTHEW’S account of our Lord’s generation 
is curiously matter of fact. ‘The genesis of 
Jesus Christ was thus”: Before Joseph had wedded 
Mary, his betrothed, “she was found with child by the 
Holy Spirit” (1: 18). Joseph decided to put her away 
quietly, but was dissuaded by a dream that the angel of 
the Lord appeared to him, saluted him as “son of 
David,” and bade him not to shrink from taking Mary 
to wife, “because that which is conceived in her is of 
the Holy Spirit.” She will bear a son and Joseph shall 
give him a name, the name of names, the name of Jesus, 
which means Saviour (ver. 19-21). The person shall 
have a title suited to his office. 

Luke’s much more detailed history begins at an earlier 
point. Mary is assured of her son’s divine paternity by 
an explanation of utmost directness and solemnity. The 
Spirit’s part is defined and the mother also hears a name 
for her child—but that name is Son of God (1 : 35). 

Some deny that any writer of the New Testament, 
besides Matthew and Luke, knows of the virgin birth. 
John’s order of ideas is certainly peculiar as well as 
striking. The eternal and the temporal are uniquely 
intermingled. There is no strict regard for historical 
succession in the first thirteen verses of this evangel’s 
proem. The eternal Word was Creator ; was the Life 

76 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN vey, 


and the Light, but uncomprehended by the darkness ; 
received testimony from the man John, whom God sent ; 
was the genuine Light, enlightening every man ; was in 
the world but unknown to the world; came to his own, 
was not received by his own, yet to some who did re- 
ceive him he gave the right to become God’s children— 
children not begotten of blood, that is, from the life of 
the man-animal; nor of the will of the flesh, that is, not 
by the impulse to propagate; nor of the will of man, 
that is, not by human choice in any way, but of God. 
And with this John at length plainly announces that 
the Word was himself made flesh, became a man, soul 
and body; as such dwelt among us, and yet men could 
see in him his proper glory, the glory of the Father’s 
only begotten (1 : 1-14). Evidently the cosmic and 
preincarnate relations of the eternal Word so entrance 
the evangelist that his thought cannot move unarrested 
down to the historic plane of the incarnation. With 
every lower step he turns to look back. When at last 
his rhapsody touches this level of ours it is but to 
survey the vast interval between what the Word was and 
what he became. Even then he sees the Word made 
flesh only after he has set forth the doctrine of the new 
sonship of believers. It is altogether a very curious, as 
well as grand and jubilant overture to the gospel story. 

Now in giving the source of our new sonship John 
passes at once from saying that it is “not by will of the 
flesh” to stating that “the Word was made flesh.” 
While repudiating the idea that our new begetting is by 
the flesh does John have in mind all the while, and make 
haste to say as the very next thing that the eternal 
Word became a man through just such a carnal beget- 


78 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


ting? Can he mean that we are begotten of God, while 
“the only begotten of the Father’ was begotten by a 
man? To whom would Mary be so certain to tell the 
mystery of Jesus’ birth as to the disciple loved of Jesus, 
of whom he said, “« Woman, behold thy son”? If the 
story of the virgin birth is not a fable John knew of it, 
and if John wrote the Fourth Gospel its proem can have 
no rational meaning, except that for us there is a spir- 
itual new begetting and for Jesus a spiritual first beget- 
ting. Whoever wrote this evangel it is admittedly the 
latest, perhaps much the latest. Its author could hardly 
have failed to hear of the virgin birth, and if he meant 
to repudiate it left his own narrative in awkward rela- 
tion to his doctrine. He knows Mary was the mother 
of Jesus (2 : 1), that Jesus was the only begotten of the 
Father, and calls him so in the verse which tells us that 
the Word was made flesh (1 : 14). Who would here 
think of two fathers? 

John here says nothing about the Holy Spirit, and it 
would be illegitimate to import any reference to the 
Third Person of the Trinity; but ifs by Spirit of God 
we mean the energy by which God operates we may 
properly regard John as holding that the Spirit makes 
men the sons of God and made the Son of God a man. 

Again, Paul’s word to the Galatians (4 : 4), “God 
sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the 
law,” is thought by many present day expositors not 
to imply the virgin birth. The phrase “born of a 
woman” is taken as a familiar equivalent to the word 
man. This equivalence is hardly so familiar as the 
appeal to such a custom would imply. It occurs in Job 
three times and in our Lord’s reference to John the 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 79 


Baptist once, as given by Matthew (11 : 11) and Luke 
(7 : 28): “Among those that are born of women there 
is not a greater prophet,’ etc. Without denying the 
alleged current use I find the significant thing in the 
passage to be the immediate conjunction of the two 
clauses, “God sent forth his Son” and “born of a 
woman.” God is father, Mary the mother. To intrude 
between these clauses the idea of a second father is 
harsh and even offensive. If we can believe that Paul’s 
attendant Luke knew the story of the annunciation and 
Paul did not, that all the facts were currently told 
among the apostles, with whom Paul conferred in 
Jerusalem, but that this fact was never mentioned to 
Paul, then the violent idea of a human paternity for 
Jesus may be read into this passage; but unless such a 
state of the case is first made out it is natural that he 
whom we call “the apostle,” and who copiously teaches 
the pre-existence of Christ, should be understood to 
have in mind here ow God sent his Son into the 
world and with what historic fitness he was called ‘the 
Son of God.” 

Of course, as in John’s case, it must be admitted 
that the passage does not mention the Holy Spirit, but 
if it at all implies a divine paternity for Jesus it as much 
implies that he was begotten by “the power of the 
Highest,” by the Holy Spirit in the sense of the angel 
of the annunciation. 

If we were to claim that John and Paul in the pas- 
sages before us meant to teach the virgin birth, a pre- 
ponderance of exegetical authority would be against us; 
but if we claim only that these passages more naturally 
take for granted than exclude the virgin birth, a pre- 


80 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


ponderance of psychological considerations favors such 
a claim. There are even certain considerations ap- 
proaching a scientific character which hold against the 
view that Christ was the Son of God, yet also son of 
Joseph. To note first the psychological objection, in 
part already intimated. 

If John and Paul believed that when the Son of God 
became a man he was Son both of God and of Joseph, 
why does neither apostle intimate so strange an opinion? 
But if on the contrary these apostles believed that the 
Spirit of God begat Christ, this fact might be taken for 
granted when they spoke of him as Son of God, which 
they often did. It is, however, alleged that they would 
have referred to the virgin birth had they known of it. 
The reverse, it still seems to me, would be true. We 
who believe in the virgin birth find but rare occasion to 
speak of it; they happened to find none. Is it not 
enough that both John and Paul constantly speak of 
God as the father of Christ? Were they never think- 
ing of God as actually his father, but all the while 
thinking of Joseph as his real father? Surely, to speak of 
Christ as divine would naturally mean that he was born 
divine. Could they hold him to be human because born 
human and divine without being born divine, yet give 
no sign of ever considering how this came to be? We 
know of no Ritschl in those days to teach the apostles 
that such questions had better not be asked. 

How little should be argued from the silence of Paul 
about the miraculous beginning of which the Gospels 
speak, may be gathered from the silence of the Gospels 
about the miraculous ending of which Paul speaks. Fhe 
alone states that upwards of five hundred saw the risen 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN SI 


Lord at once. But Luke was Paul’s companion. Luke 
says he got together his facts by careful inquiry right 
and left. He must have known what Paul told to the 
Corinthians, but he says not a word about the five hun- 
dred. Nor does John, nor Mark, nor Matthew, unless 
a veiled reference may be found in the Lord’s appoint- 
ment of a rendezvous in Galilee (26: 32; 28:7, 16, 17). 

But a difficulty arises from what we know of the 
origin and constitution of a human soul. A person 
complete owes his existence to a father and a mother. 
He cannot have more than two parents. Yet it is held 
that in some way Christ could be divine while Joseph 
was his father. The common conviction among Chris- 
tians as to what Christ was is not given up, but its 
familiar basis is unconditionally surrendered. It is a 
view creditable to the faith of those who hold it. The 
question is not to be evaded, how Jesus, born of earthy 
parents, could become the eternal Word. By genera- 
tion he was man; how was he also God? For he 
always said “I.” The divine and the human in him 
spoke and existed as one. The Nestorian theory that 
there was a divine person in him besides a human person 
is not be thought of; nor that by moral conformity 
the human in him received the divine. Such a recep- 
tion is possible to us also, but does not blend our soul 
and God into one person. It is enough, and it is fair to 
say that for the man Jesus, ordinarily begotten and 
born, to be one with the pre-existent, personal Word, 
yet without any parental connection with Godhead, is 
the most violently incredible, because most deliberately 
unaccountable miracle ever offered to faith. How could 


it serve as the pragmatic basis of all Christian faith ? 
G 


82 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


It may be added that at no early period in the dis- 
cipleship of the apostles could Mary discreetly tell the 
story of the annunciation, and at no early period in the 
adhesion of either Jews or Gentiles could the apostles 
spread the story. Indeed, at no period would frequent 
occasion arise for referring to the virgin birth. Only in 
degenerate ages have the preachers of our faith been 
given to wonder-mongering. The virgin birth accounts 
for Christ, but not for believing in Christ. What is 
often said in effect of all miracles is true at least of this 
miracle: The miracle does not prove Christianity ; 
Christianity approves the miracle. 


2. The Objections 

As to the Holy Spirit’s part in begetting our Lord 
the present state of opinion is novel and critical... It7s 
part of a general situation, to which we must give a 
little notice in order to estimate worthily the evangelical 
narrative and its fruits. 


(1) Anti-mystical—Ritschl 

A disposition exists to lighten the burdens of faith 
by cancelling every mystery from dogma, in particular 
from dogma about Christ. It is not so much intended 
to prove that his father was human, as to make little of 
all question about his father. The fullest exemplar of 
this disposition is its chief promoter and guide, Dr. 
Albrecht Ritschl, to whom it was a release from in- 
tolerable doubts. Ritschl’s name is attached to many 
teachings, but to no other so important as his insistence 
that all theoretical inquiries about religion shall be dis- 
missed. It was his good fortune to find a widespread 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN _ 83 


eagerness for just such mental relief, and he had the 
sagacity to meet this eagerness with an eminently 
practical and modern provision. It was his timely way 
of showing that we can be Christians without being 
theologians. For example, Christ he says answers ey- 
ery necessary purpose to us of eternal and only Son of 
God when he persuades us of God’s love, and thus gives 
us power to triumph over earthly ills. If we could 
know that Christ was begotten of God this knowledge 
would not enhance his value to us either morally or 
religiously. Such knowledge, to be sure, would be 
curious and scientifically important, except for the fact 
that it could never be demonstrated to science. Nor 
can it for us. 

This and many kindred questions, we must admit, 
have been matter of endless dispute, ground of serious 
reproach, and occasion of contemptuous infidelity, yet all 
were questions which, according to Ritschl, it was 
never possible nor ever important to answer. After 
Kant, Ritschl holds that in the presence of these prob- 
lems pure reason is impotent. ~ In fact, pure reason 
cannot know the ultimate reality of anything. But prac- 
tical reason is competent. It can know all that is well 
worth knowing. Ritschl here seems to convert Lotze’s 
philosophical idea that the knowability of a thing con- 
stitutes its worth to us into a converse theological idea, 
that the worth to us of a truth makes it knowable. 
Thus we may know God in knowing Christ, because in 
Christ we attain the use and enjoyment of all that God 
has of moral and religious value for us. Any conserva- 
tive might say it, but Ritschl follows his fashion of 
“holding fast the form of sound words,” while he 


84 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


empties out their current meaning and pours in another. 
To Ritschl it is enough that Christ furnishes the idea 
of God as love; to the church Christ presents what the 
love of God has done and does. According to Ritschl, 
then, we may well dispense with scientific certainties in 
the realm of spiritual things, and on the other hand we 
ought to repel all mystical bewilderment about them. 
No doubt Ritschl brings great relief to many minds 
in distinguishing moral and religious from intellectual 
interests. It is possible for his followers to admit all 
the rationalistic objections to miracles, and all the 
critical objections to the Bible, even to give over the 
ancient faith on these matters to the enemy to be wor- 
ried and torn and killed, while the disciple of the new 
school rests serene on the few doctrines which his 
“judgment of worth” indorses, and which are quite 
clear of all philosophical or scientific risks. The 
Ritschlian may be able thus to lock up in limbo the 
historic problems, and even the historic settlement of 
problems; but the mass of thinking Christians have 
never shown either willingness or ability to take sum- 
mary leave of their problems. Most earnest minds 
look with inappeasable longing toward a conclusive an- 
swer to such questions as whether God made the 
worlds, whether Christ is his Son, whether Christ was 
a veritable sacrifice for sin, whether he rose from the 
dead, whether the Holy Spirit transforms and dwells in 
believers, whether any of these alleged transcendent 
realities have been attested by supernatural signs; or 
whether as to these matters all question is vain. Aver- 
age Christians of intelligence feel that they must know 
whether they know, and what they can know. The in- 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 85 


tellectual aspect of Christianity cannot be obliterated. 
Doctrine must seem fundamental to availability. A 
judgment as to the worth of Christianity involves a 
judgment as to its truth. The practical rests on the 
theoretical so far as this; to wit, the theoretical ex- 
pounds the practical. If we are assured that no an- 
swer is possible to the questions which Ritschlianism 
puts out of court, most of us will be unable to rest 
contented with such verdicts and decisions as Ritsch- 
lianism affords. Or, if these are accepted, it will be as 
but small and pitiful fragments of the shattered rock 
on which the church was built. 

We may go further and predict that, if the venerable 
doctrines of the faith, especially about Christ, are slain, 
the questions which they answered will revive and per- 
sist until new doctrines are framed which satisfy both 
the intellectual and the spiritual wants of men. A new 
Christianity cannot take the place of the old Christian- 
ity unless the new is found to be more adequate than 
the old, and therefore essentially truer. The church 
has framed its own judgment of worth; so has the 
common mind. This has always prevailed and will still 
prevail. If it had been unfavorable to Christian beliefs, 
they could never have found acceptance; and so long 
as it holds to them they will not be relinquished. To 
the historic value-judgment of the church that proposed 
by Ritschl cannot but appear unsubstantial and even 
delusive. To say that the revelation of God’s love in 
Christ makes him answer the purpose to us of the Son 
of God, and excludes all propriety in asking whether 
he was veritably such or not, must seem in effect like 
saying, “ Let us make believe that Jesus was the Son 


86 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


of God. It will be all the same to us as though it were 
true.” But a gospel of make-believe is unsatisfactory 
to all Christians except the followers of Mrs. Eddy, and 
the very different disciples of the learned Ritschl. It 
would seem that it cannot long satisfy Christians of 
any sort. The historic value-judgment is an estimate 
of the worth of facts. It never rested on a confessed 
unreality or uncertainty. And it could be contented 
only with wide conquests. It covers now a large terri- 
tory. It must itself be overthrown before it will sur- 
render these possessions. It must meet with its Sedan 
before it will give up its Alsace and Lorraine. 


(2) Mystical—Walker 

Besides the Ritschlian refusal to consider any possi- 
ble mystery in the nature of Christ, and the semi- 
Ritschlian acceptance of his deity without admitting 
that God begat him, there is a thorough-going reference 
of the whole case to the activity of the Holy Spirit. 
The recent work of W. L. Walker, “The Spirit and the 
Incarnation,’ is the most engaging attempt of late to 
explain Christology philosophically yet evangelically. 
The book’s especial charm is its completeness, coher- 
ence, and unobtrusive piety. Its path is parallel to 
Martineau’s “Way Out of the Trinitarian Contro- 
versy,” although that “Way Out”’ left Martineau with 
his Unitarians, and Walker came back to the evangeli- 
cals. According to this theory the Father is God as 
source of all being; the Son is God as going forth to 
creatures ; the Spirit is the innermost essence of God 
and Christ. The author rejects distinct personalities in 
the three. This is essentially modalistic, although Mr. 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 87 


Walker does not hold to Sabellianism, in the sense that 
the personal modes of divine existence were successive. 
In the alleged relations of God to the world modalism 
passes into monism. The Spirit, which is the life not 
only of God but of all things, in accepting the limita- 
tions of that in which it resides, shapes them at first 
as the unconscious idea and potency of the universe. 
Consciousness is reached when the evolution produces 
animal life; rationality when it reaches man, and God’s 
self-realization when Christ is born. And so Christ is 
“the result of the whole working of the Word or Spirit 
in nature and in man.” A “literal interpretation of the 
narratives [of the nativity] cannot compel belief”’ (p. 
323). Without irruption of miracle God steadily ani- 
mates nature until its processes reach their goal in 
revealing the Son of Man as Son of God. The Spirit, 
ever the life of God and of things, is uniquely the life 
of Jesus, in whom the process of evolution ends. 
However compatible with New Testament texts this 
account of Christ may be, the New Testament would 
never have suggested it. The proem of John’s evangel 
teaches the transcendence of God, the assumption by 
the Word of our humanity as a new vestment, as more 
than a new vestment, as a new nature, quite as distinctly 
as this appears in Matthew’s or Luke’s story of the na- 
tivity. Even Paul’s identification of the pre-existent Son 
with the divine fullness, as shown by the Son’s manifold 
cosmic relations, makes the Son not less distinct from 
the essence of things than when, in the same account 
the Son figures as making peace between God and crea- 
tion (Col. 1 : 15-20). God is immanent in the universe, 
or, if one prefers, the universe is immanent in God, pre- 


88 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


cisely because e zs not the universe. It can be said to 
be supported by him, because it is NOT HE. 

Unless we and these many generations have unac- 
countably misread the New Testament, Mr. Walker’s 
modalism, that is, his denial of distinct personalities in 
the Godhead, finds even less support in the New Testa- 
ment than does his monism, that is, his identification 
of all energy and plan, life and reason with the Spirit - 
of God. Comprehensive and coherent, devout and 
almost dazzling as his theory is, it must look for sup- 
port not to the Bible but to philosophy. Of this the 
author is very well aware. In effect he owns it when 
he makes his appeal to what Christians know by ex- 
perience of the indwelling Spirit, rather than to what 
they read about it in the old Book which has served 
so long as norm of the Christian faith. But before 
philosophy can identify the Spirit of God with the 
energy in things, indeed before we need consider any 
philosophical objections to such an_ identification, 
science must be satisfied of what thus far she per- 
sistently denies ; namely, that physical energy and so- 
called mental energy can be converted into each other. 
The physical energy of a blow awakens the “mental 
energy” of resentment, and maybe a determination to 
fight. But the energy of the blow is not converted 
into the energy of the resentment, nor is the “energy”’ 
bent on fighting converted into the bodily force of the 
blow in return. Force cannot be absorbed into mind, 
nor mind flow forth in force. God may create force, but 
it is not an efflux from him. His Spirit is not physical 
energy. This stumbling-block lies at the threshold of 
all monistic schemes. No effectual removal of it has 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 89 


yet been undertaken, nor can be dispensed with by deny- 
ing that the stumbling-block is there. 

But the essential mysticism of Mr. Walker's theory 
puts it quite apart from anti-mystical Ritschlian and 
semi-Ritschlian theories. It is not hostile to evangel- 
ical trust. The typical Ritschlian and semi-Ritschlian 
views are mild-mannered but formidable enemies of the 
common faith. They have started the whisper that it 
is wiser not to insist on the tradition about Jesus hav- 
ing no earthly father. Yet when this attitude is quietly 
taken, on any ground, it bears itself so unlike the arro- 
gant, aggressive, heavy-armed hostility of the old uni- 
tarianism, it seems so sympathetic, soft-spoken, smiling, 
it makes so loving use of the familiar terms “Son of 
God,” “reconciliation,” and the like, that one forgets 
to ask whether there are any risks in this suave neol- 
ogy. One finds it rather a thing to muse over, spec- 
ulating whether, since it came gently as a mist, it will 
not presently lift like a mist, without giving a chill to 
faith. Or lightly asks, which smacks the more piquant, 
that we need not ask what Christ was, or that we need 
not ask how he came to be what he was? The drift of 
doctrine might almost be looked upon as a spectacle 
«for dilettante unconcern, and not at all as an issue of 
life and death. 

A situation like this, both for seriousness and for 
triviality, throws into strong relief the massive basement 
built for faith when the Holy Spirit begat Christ. 


3. The Consequences 
Many writers on the Holy Spirit seem to have taken 
advantage of the theme to expand from this point of 


90 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


view entire systems of theology. Experience in writing 
one more book on this subject teaches the author 
charity. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is so inter- 
twined with other Christian doctrines that it cannot be 
disentangled ; nor can its real significance be exhibited 
except by tracing these relations. This is particularly 
true as to the relations of the Holy Spirit to Jesus Christ. 
How can we know what Jesus was apart from the Spirit ? 
How can we know what the Spirit was to him, except by 
a study of our Lord in different situations ? 


(1) Divinity of Christ 

The generation of our Lord by the Spirit of God 
wherever it has become known, has secured an unhes- 
itating and joyous acceptance of the divinity of Christ. 
Such an interposition of God drew after it the visit of 
the heavenly host, of the watchful star, of the wise men 
from the wondering East, of the gentle shepherds fa- 
miliar with the night, of the bloody messengers from 
frightened Herod, started the nunc dimittis of devout 
Simeon, and has lifted the advent song in all ages, be- 
cause that Holy Thing which was born of Mary could be 
no other than the Son of God. The Holy Spirit at the 
outset made sure of all that Christ was to be for men. 
Nothing else would have made it sure; but begetting by 
the Holy Ghost could leave nothing uncertain. Faith 
in the proper divinity of Christ is the vital principle of 
Christianity. When it perishes Christianity dies. Such 
faith must have an appreciable basis in fact. That basis 
is the begetting by the Holy Ghost. To ask that this 
basis be given up is to ask that faith outdo in rashness 
the temptation on the temple's pinnacle: Jesus was in- 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN OI 


vited to cast himself upon the care of angels; faith is 
invited to cast herself upon the empty air. 

Let it be remembered that some who hold to the di- 
vinity of our Lord will not accept any confirmation of 
their faith from the testimony of Matthew and Luke to 
the begetting of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. It is an 
illustration of the extreme to which a new method of 
inquiry at first carries those who adopt it. In the present 
case the method is that of historical reconstruction. 
The books of the New Testament are scrutinized for 
intimations of their origin and relations, and then a 
biblical theology framed in harmony with the rebuilt 
history of the books. A critic may admit that Paul 
holds firmly to the divinity of Christ, but does so on the 
ground of his resurrection and of the life which is im- 
parted to us by the Spirit of Christ. So large place in 
Paul’s Christology was assigned to what our Lord now 
is and does, so small place to his career on earth, that 
speculative minds following Paul soon caught at the 
fancy that Christ was divine only and his humanity 
merely an appearance. This in turn gave occasion for 
John’s doctrine of the Word and of the Word incar- 
nated. Therefore, in John’s Gospel the Word reveals 
his divine glory through the flesh, while in Paul’s doc- 
trine that glory is revealed through us, and in John’s 
first Epistle denial that “Jesus Christ is come in the 
flesh” is denounced as anti-Christian (4 : 3). With 
such an origin in spiritual experience or Christological 
speculation for belief in the divinity of Christ, no ac- 
count is made of the record of the virgin birth in 
Matthew and Luke. The historical source of the doc- 
trine having been conjecturally made out, exegesis must 


Q2 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


be absolutely conformable. And so Luke is said not to 
draw the doctrine of Christ’s divinity from his own 
elaborate account of the generation of Jesus by the 
Holy Spirit. How little he regards this tale may be 
known from the fact that he speaks of Joseph as the 
father, Joseph and Mary as the parents of Jesus. 

Now this is truly a remarkable attempt by the criti- 
cal processes of the present day to empty a Gospel of 
the meaning always heretofore found init. The history 
proposed for the views of Paul and John may be re- 
garded as highly probable without rendering the familiar 
interpretation of Matthew and Luke improbable. Does 
Luke call Joseph the father of Jesus, Joseph and Mary 
his parents? He calls them so but does not so regard 
them. The only instance of terming Joseph father is 
Mary’s expostulation to her boy: “Behold, thy father 
and I have sought thee sorrowing.”’ How else could 
she have spoken of Joseph? Would not the title father 
be given even to an ordinary step-father? Must we not 
believe that it was naturally and always used of Joseph? 
And did not Jesus at once give his mother something 
to “keep in her heart” by laying claim to another 
father? ‘Did ye not know I must be in my Father’s 
house ?”’ (Luke 2: 48, 49.) How can we think so meanly 
of Luke’s intelligence as to suppose that he could 
record a story of the annunciation, which renounced 
for Jesus an earthly father, and still go on fancying that 
Jesus had such a father? The same considerations 
apply to the two instances, the circumcision of Jesus 
and his first Passover (Luke 2 : 27, 41), in which his 
putative parents were termed parents. In the next 
chapter an express disclaimer is introduced by Luke as 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 93 


to the relation of Jesus to Joseph: “ Being (as was 
supposed) the son of Joseph” (3 : 23). 


(2) Pre-existence of Christ 

How does the generation of the Son of God by the 
Holy Spirit bear on belief in his pre-existence? Candor 
compels the reply that if we were to insist in the usual 
way on the begetting of Jesus by the Third Person of 
the Trinity, not only would such a question be un- 
answerable for a trinitarian, but so objectionable that it 
ought never to be asked. Can it be credited that the 
Eternal Word, by whom all things were created, was 
incapable of providing himself a human body? Dare 
we think that he who is the life of all men coming into 
the world, when he himself came could not be the life 
of Jesus? Is there any reason of any kind for holding 
that not himself, nor the Father whose agent he was in 
all things, nor the power of the Highest by which the 
Word did all things, but the Third Person in the 
Trinity, to which he was never subordinated, must 
make the Word flesh ? 

So dark and repellent a supposition as the generation 
of Jesus by the Holy Spirit in an ultra-dogmatic, trini- 
tarian sense, is swept aside by the loyally exegetical 
thought of the generative Spirit as “the power of the 
Highest.” Certainly it was by God’s power that Jesus 
was begotten. We could not tell, and we need not ask 
whether the Word himself put forth that energy by 
entering into personal union with the human. It would, 
however, look more suitable to the idea of fatherhood in 
God to regard God himself as exercising that power 
when the pre-existent Word, through whom his power 


94 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


is ever exercised, was by the Spirit, which is God's 
power, made flesh. 


(8) Dipersonality 

The refusal to carry back to the incarnation the later 
revelation that the Holy Spirit is a Third Person in a 
Trinity safeguards the notion that the divine in Christ 
was at least a Second Person in the Godhead. The 
Spirit has lately been spoken of in Mr. Walker’s strik- 
ing book (p. 188) already commented on (p. 86 f.), as 
“the principle of Christ’s life from the first.” But that 
which begat the life-principle in Christ is not itself his 
life-principle.. A father’s soul is not his son’s soul; the 
Second Person is not the First incarnated. 

Indeed, the Spirit of God in begetting Jesus so far 
brought to light for the first time personal distinctions 
in the Deity. It is because the first and second of 
these quasi persons correspond so well to the incar- 
nation that the incarnation could offer them to our 
knowledge. The incarnation certainly reveals his- 
torical fatherhood and sonship; does it also reveal 
eternal sonship and fatherhood? The First Person in 
the Trinity is not certainly father from eternity of the 
Second Person; nor certainly not so. It is plain that 
there are two Eternal Persons; what is not plain is that 
the idea of paternity which best describes the immacu- 
late conception is also an adequate ontology of the rela- 
tion between these Persons from eternity. But the incar- 
nation reveals duality at most. It prepares us to learn 
that the Holy Spirit also is a distinct person, but for a 
plain assurance of his personality we must await the rev- 
elation by Jesus himself concerning the Comforter. 


CHRIST BEGOTTEN 95 


(4) Sinlessness and Susceptibility 

The sinlessness of Jesus may be studied in the light 
of his generation by the Holy Spirit. That God was 
his father and Mary his mother contains implications 
which could be known only if we know what the divine 
and the human singly imply, and what their relations 
are in Christ. But we know enough to see that. his 
origin explains the facts of his life; he was free from 
sin, but susceptible to temptation. 

That he was entirely unaffected by the native de- 
pravity of his mother could not be taken for granted 
by any one who believes depravity to be inherited. Does 
the New Testament teach that Jesus in no degree shared 
his mother’s moral state? Theologians have often in- 
sisted that he had the human nature of the unfallen 
Adam. But where did he get it? Paul does not say 
he had it. Paul says, on the contrary, that God sent 
‘his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh”? (Rom. 
8: 3). Would Paul, would even a theologian, say that 
Adam was created in the likeness of sinful flesh? That 
is, what Adam was by creation, and what Jesus was by 
birth are not to be stated in the same way. “ Sinful 
flesh”? means to Paul the seat and the symbol of sin- 
fulness. It could not be attributed to Jesus, because 
he was not sinful; and that he was not sinful Paul 
plainly enough means in saying that God sent his Son, 
not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness of it. Jesus in- 
herited from his mother the reality of flesh, and the 
likeness of sinfulness. What saved him from the real- 
ity of sinfulness? His generation by the Holy Spirit. 
What was it in him that was like sinfulness, but was 
not sinfulness? What could he accept without moral 


96 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


stain? What could the Holy Spirit suffer him to ac- 
cept as an inheritance from depravity? His liability to 
temptation seems to have been such an heritage. The 
susceptibility to temptation, which the Holy Spirit left 
him to inherit, the Spirit also led him to realize, as we 
must presently consider. 

The one book in the New Testament which sets out 
elaborately to exalt Jesus Christ above all creatures is 
the Epistle to the Hebrews. But this Epistle ascribes 
his competence as High Priest to the fact that he 
“hath suffered being tempted” (2 : 18), and proves his 
priestly sympathy with our infirmities by the fact that 
he “was tempted in all points like as we are” (4 : 15). 
That is to say, this official fitness of the Christ was 
provided for by a personal fitness in Jesus; and it was 
as much the function of the Holy Spirit in begetting 
him to leave him subject to temptation as to secure 
him from depravity; to stamp on him as notable a like- 
ness to sinful flesh as there was reality of sinlessness. 
But that Jesus was to be saved from all taint of de- 
pravity was declared in so many words when Mary was 
told that the Holy Spirit would beget by her a “holy 
being” (Luke 1: 35). A fuller consideration of this 
topic belongs to the second part of the next chapter. 


CHAPTER VIII 
CHRIST INSTALLED 


ESUS is about to enter on his mission as the 

Christ. He enters through the solemn door of 

baptism into the mystery of the forty days, and 
passes out of this gloomy vestibule into. the open court 
of his official life, beyond which is the adytum, the 
Holiest Place, with veil as yet unrent. The baptism 
was the formal, the temptation was the moral, installa- 
tion of the Christ. Each invites study from the point 
of view afforded by our theme. 


1. The Baptism 

The baptism of our Lord has both personal and official 
importance. The latter is much the more varied and dif- 
cult to comprehend. We study first the baptism 


(1) Of Jesus, the Person 

It was the Spirit’s descent which places the baptism 
of the person Jesus within the purview of this inquiry. 
There are curious diversities in the Gospel stories! 


1 According to Matthew (3 : 16) and Mark (1 : 10) the descent was 
seen by Jesus—by whom seen Luke does not state—and by the bap- 
tizer, according to John (1 : 32). According to Matthew, Mark, and 
John, the Spirit descended as a dove descends to rest; but the specific 
and careful Luke has it that the Spirit came down ‘‘in bodily form like 
a dove’’ (3:22). It is Luke who also mentions that Jesus was praying 
when the Spirit came. The Father’s acknowledgment was addressed 
to Jesus, according to Mark and Luke ; to any that heard it, according 
to Matthew ; while the fourth Gospel substitutes for a divine acknowl- 


Ht 97 


98 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


which, without implying contradiction, raise the ques- 
tion, who saw the Spirit descend, and who heard the 
voice from heaven? All agree that the descent and the 
voice were God’s response to the obedience of his Son. 
We find here at the beginning what Paul saw at the 
end. Because Jesus humbled himself and became obe- 
dient, even accepting the humiliation of a baptism, God 
highly exalted him, and called him at once by the name 
which is above every name (Phil. 2 : 8, 9). We need 
not curiously inquire in this connection how to accept 
baptism was for both Jesus and John “to fulfill all right- 
eousness”’ (Matt. 3:15); but we can feel what we might 
not be able to show, that the baptism was for Jesus, per- 
sonally considered, an act of submission and of piety. 

We too could be audaciously meek as John. We 
too could forbid Jesus, and say, “I have need to be 
baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” But in 
both points we would be wrong, as John was. There 
was no need of being baptized by Jesus. He baptized 
no one. He did more for us, but not that. Whatever 
benefit baptism can convey, the benefit was not to be 
enhanced by such a pre-eminence in the administrator. 
Paul would not risk baptizing with his own hands. 
Any one who boasted of baptism by Paul would thereby 
and so far have made Paul, in spite of himself, baptize 
in his own name. Maybe to this day the good that 
there is in a baptism does not turn on who performs it, 
but on this, that it is a filling up of all righteousness. 
It certainly had for Jesus, and may have for us, that 
becoming quality. 


edgment the proclamation by John the Baptist that he had seen the 
Spirit descend and remain, and so knew the Son of God (1: 33, 34). 


a a To _— 


ae 


CHRIST INSTALLED 99 


Furthermore, as it was becoming in Jesus to submit 
to baptism, it became him to receive it from the com- 
missioned Baptist, the devout yet imperfect John. An- 
other baptism awaited Jesus at the close of three swift 
and crowded years. That baptism too must be ad- 
ministered by hands that had sinned, by hands less 
worthy than those of John. To offer the ancient 
sacrifices was an act of loyalty; to offer the supreme 
sacrifice was the last outrage of disloyalty. But it 
would become Jesus to accept that final baptism, and 
it now became him to receive, and John to administer, 
this first baptism. 

The Father’s response was a recognition and an ac- 
ceptance of the fulfilled righteousness. It was fitting 
to send the Spirit of peace by the emblem of peace. 
It was fitting that God should now acknowledge his 
Son. In these respects the baptism of Jesus was not 
singular. For thousands coming up out of the water 
the heavens have opened, the Spirit descended, the 
Father’s voice been heard. To all of these thousands 
insight should be easy into the personal effects of bap- 
tism on Jesus. For them, if not for him, but possibly 
for him also, the gift of the Spirit summed up all. It 
is the Spirit’s coming which for us divides the skies; 
it is the Spirit that makes us hear the Father’s voice ; 
it is the Spirit of God which becomes in us the spirit 
of adoption, and responds with “Abba, Father,’ when 
the Father says to us, as to Jesus, “ My son.” 

The solemn elation of that hour was needed by our 
Lord. The voice and the Spirit did not make him 
God’s Son, as the dull-souled Jewish Christianity of the 
first’ century soon began to say, and as some other 


100 THE,-HOLY SPIRIT 


wrinkled and starved vagary of doctrine in every cen- 
tury since the first has ventured to respond. His bap- 
tism did not make Jesus the Son of God, probably did 
not reveal to himself the fact, but it made him feel sure 
that he was such. By what inward intimation he came 
to know that God was his Father, we are in no way in- 
formed. Whether he could afterward say, ‘Before 
Abraham was I am,” because his recollections ran back 
through infancy to “the glory that he had with the 
Father before the world was,” or whether from boyhood 
on he had instinctively felt his way to knowledge of his 
eternal pre-existence, or whether it was directly revealed 
to him when a man grown, as we suppose mysteries 
were sometimes revealed to prophets, we can only help- 
lessly conjecture. However clear his inward persuasion 
may have been, an inward persuasion is one thing and 
an outward notification quite another thing. He wasa 
man ; how assuring, then, the formal proclamation that 
he was the beloved Son of God! What a personal 
equipment for his ministry! How great the need at 
every moment for all the spiritual power to be thence 
derived! So assured, his serenity becomes intelligible. 
We can see in part how shame could not humiliate, nor 
clamor confuse, nor pain enfeeble, nor dread of death 
check the course of the Son of Man, since he knew 
that he was also the Son of God. It was all-important 
to him that the Spirit which brought this assurance 
should remain; it is all-important to us that the same 
Spirit should remain and render the same service now 
as then. If the spirit of assurance had been displaced 
by the spirit of bondage to fear, the strong character 
of Jesus would have been wrecked. Such a substitu- 


CHRIST INSTALLED IOI 


tion too often does that mischief now. But for him to 
fulfill all righteousness brought and kept the assurance 
of his Sonship; and it is for us the condition of the 


Comforter’s abiding. Let us turn from the somewhat — 


obvious lessons of baptism in the case of the person 
Jesus, to study in its official importance, the baptism 


(2) Of Christ, the Official 


The baptism of the Christ and the descent on him of 
the Holy Spirit occurred together, and belonged to- 
gether. The baptism of the person Jesus meant for 
him the “fulfillment of all righteousness” and was duly 
rewarded. We can see that it was so, perplexing as 
the question still may be how this duty came to be laid 
on Jesus. As to the official Christ, the descent of the 
Spirit after he was baptized requires us to look for an 
intelligible significance and an official propriety in the 
baptism itself. 

The boldest statement about it was made by John the 
Baptist. He came baptizing others in order that the 
Christ might be “made manifest to Israel.” John was 
to know him by the descent and abiding of the Spirit 
(Johny iv: 31, 32). Wes may: atleast recognize that, 
whatever other services John’s baptism rendered, this 
service was its crown. 

In studying the baptism of the Christ we must frankly 
ask what John’s baptism meant for others who sought it. 
What it meant for themselves all would understand it to 
mean for Christ. It was this natural way of looking at 
the matter which led John to decline baptizing Jesus. 
Can we suppose that such a meaning was overlooked by 
our Lord when he insisted on being baptized ? 


102 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


- John’s baptism had two faces, One turned toward 
the past, the other toward the future. As to the past 
it was a confession and a purification. Our Lord could 
not escape an application to him of this meaning, but 
he did not avoid its edge, he did not explain it away. 
Those who noticed the implication as John did, he left 
with it, as afterward he left the young ruler whom he 
would not allow to call him “good.” “None is good 
but God.” In so saying he ranked himself with us 
men, and in receiving the baptism of repentance his 
first official act was to take his place among men. 

But it is easy to see that the backward look of John’s 
baptism was only a minor matter, although indispensa- 
ble; the main significance was for the future. The 
future alone gave this baptism real occasion for any 
one. What, then, of the future? The kingdom of 
heaven was at hand and a baptizing inducted every man 
into his place in that kingdom. For Christ this must 
be the chief importance of being baptized if the cere- 
mony could afford its own meaning. It introduced him 
into the kingdom of heaven and into his own place 
there. But the place of Christ was at the head of the 
kingdom. Such a place could hardly be accorded 
without a rite of institution, nor by a rite less solemn, 
less profoundly significant than baptism. Especially 
suitable was it that the Father should there and then 
acknowledge his Son, and that together with this ac- 
knowledgment should be conferred on Christ the con- 
secrating and enabling Spirit. 

So far all is‘plain. A laving in water and an anoint- 
ing with oil was the well-known rite of consecration. 
David would not permit his lawless followers to lay 


CHRIST INSTALLED 103 


hands on Saul, the Lord’s anointed (1 Sam. 24 : 6). By 
this holy unction Solomon won his throne against the 
attractive and precipitate Adonijah (1 Kings I : 39-53). 
The chrism was not to be omitted for the disciples of 
Ghxist (2,Cor1 7.21.33. Johni2 7 20),-stull less. for: the 
Lord himself. It made him the Anointed, the Mes- 
siah, the Christ. His anointing and theirs was of the 
Holy Spirit. In no case, to be sure, was the Spirit 
given under the form of an unction, but it was thought 
of and spoken of as such. “He who hath anointed 
Useensaia® Raul,- is: God" "|(2)Corei-ven) Vex have 
an unction from the Holy One,” wrote John (1 John 
2: 20). Peter says “God anointed Jesus with the 
Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10 : 38); and the 
Lord himself announced to his wondering townsfolk in 
Nazareth, “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because 
he anointed me to publish good tidings to the poor’”’ 
(Luke 4:18). It is no strain of the story’s meaning 
to understand the baptism and the gift of the Spirit as 
our Lord’s official commission and induction. It would 
be unnatural and a strain not so to understand. “Be- 
hold my servant, whom I have chosen,” said Jehovah, 
“T will put my Spirit upon him” (Matt. 12 : 18). 

All this is sufficiently clear for precisely that mo- 
‘ment; but may we not also look back from the com- 
pleted mission to its opening, and from such a point of 
view see the two phases of the baptism blend into one? 
The phase turned toward the past faces sins to be 
washed away. Accepting this phase Jesus took a place 
among his people. That looking toward the future 
sees for all the baptized a place in the coming kingdom. 
Accepting this phase Christ took his place at the head 


104 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


of the kingdom. But Jesus becomes the Christ, he 
takes his place at the head of the kingdom by making 
common cause with his people. The sins which his 
baptism confessed we discover as we look back, were 
the sins of his people ; the sin washed away was the sin 
of the world. 

There are not wanting some who see in the baptism 
of Christ his conscious acceptance at the outset of the 
position which he openly took to himself in the end, 
the position foretold by Isaiah of the servant of Jeho- 
vah: “He was numbered with the transgressors.” 
And so the “righteous servant” fulfilled all righteous- 
ness when in symbol he “justified many by bearing 
theiriniquities > (Isay 63.341; 12 Luke 22/3/37). Or 
if we dare not say that the Lord’s baptism was meant 
to have such a signification in advance, how deny it this 
significance in retrospect ? 


Whatever strength the baptism afforded as a defini- - 


tive and official consecration, whatever comfort it 
brought through the acknowledgment of him by the 
Father, whatever inspiration and uplift through the 
descent of the Spirit, all were needed, and urgently 
needed, for “immediately the Spirit driveth him into 
the wilderness” (Mark I : 12) “to be tempted of the 
devil ” (Matt. 4 : 1). 


2. The Temptation 

The moral installation of our Lord was his tempta- 
tion in the wilderness. But the experience of tempta- 
tion was an equipment and an induction for the Christ 
by being a discipline for the person Jesus. Us he 


1 See Denney’s ‘‘The Death of Christ,’’ Pp. 20, 21. 


—_ ' % 
il el ee 


— 


CHRIST INSTALLED 105 


would have pray not to be led into temptation, but he 
himself accepted the test. And “in that he himself 
hath suffered being tempted” he would spare us the 
suffering, above all, the risk of temptation.’ . 


(1) Whence the Temptation ? 

Jesus had now been acknowledged by the Father and 
endued with the Holy Spirit. So recognized and in- 
vested he must prepare for what was before him. A 
wise and large-minded man will not enter on an im- 
portant calling without full contemplation of its aims 
and forecast alike of its opportunities and its obstacles. 
The spirit of a normal young man rises to thoughts like 
these. They provide his ambitions. With such vigor 
as he can he will fix his purpose and concentrate his de- 
sires. Happy for him afterward if he is able to renew 
the vision when it fades; happy if he can relight his 
enthusiasm when it cools. No prudence won by ex- 
perience, no steadiness gained through habit can com- 
pensate for the loss of youthful zest, and the prompt 
response of a fresh, unwearied will to the first vision of 
exalted aims. 

Aims so exalted, so exacting, a life so clear-seeing, so 


1 The way in which the story is introduced by the synoptists respec- 
tively is striking, and compels the reader to recognize great significance 
in the whole transaction. Matthew says that ‘‘ Jesus was led into the 
wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil’? (4:1). Mark’s 
thought may not be so startling but his language is stronger: ‘‘Imme- 
diately the Spirit flings him out into the wilderness,’’ or as it is famil- 
iarly translated, ‘‘drives him’’ (1: 12). Luke, with characteristic 
historic fullness and discrimination states that ‘‘ Jesus, full of the Holy 
Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wil- 
derness, forty days tempted of the devil’’ (4: 1, 2). Combining these 
accounts we have a natural situation. 


106 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


devoted, were never demanded of any as now of the 
Christ. He must be prepared for every turn of popular 
sentiment. His mind must be so occupied by his real 
objects that adulation will not be able to divert his 
purpose, nor hostility to make him waver. Above all, 
he must win such equipoise by steadily looking into all 
possibilities as never to be caught unawares. A new 
situation in which a man finds himself without previous 
consideration, either takes him by surprise, or he takes 
it stolidly asa mere matter of course. In either case its 
meaning is missed or its opportunity lost. 

But meditation, which ought to prepare a man, may 
distract him by dwelling on some single factor in the 
case. To think beforehand is only less dangerous 
than not to do so. Meditation brings temptation. No 
doubt Luke was right in making the temptations of 
Satan extend over the forty days and culminate in three 
special enticements. To meet its true purpose reflec- 
tion must be full, deliberate, thorough. Forty days was 
not too long to prepare even Jesus for such demands as 
he was about to face. Well for him if the long fast did 
not exhaust the spiritual energy received at his baptism. 

It was not enough to think long, with only wild beasts 
as his indifferent companions. Our Lord must now be 
tested by disadvantages more formidable than come with 
the disabling weakness of age. His bodily vigor was 
sapped by a protracted fast. How he endured it we 
know not; but afterward, as Luke tells us, the distress 
of starvation made itself felt. ‘He hungered.’’ Moses 
and Elijah had undergone the same test on the wild 
Mountain of the Law. Comparison is instructive. 

These hardiest souls in Hebrew history had not quite 


CHRIST INSTALLED 107 


stood up to the trial. Moses passed his retirement in 
the Law-giver’s presence. So close was this man to 
his Maker that he dared expostulate with God in be- 
half of the sottish people who fancied that Jehovah. 
could be worshiped as a calf. But Moses’ own spirit 
broke loose when he came in view of the idolatrous 
revels. The meekness, which was largely his power, 
gave way to impatience; impatience with the people 
turned to petulance toward Jehovah, and Moses dashed 
against the foot of the mountain the tables of stone 
which God’s own hand had shaped and inscribed. 

Elijah too, on the heels of his spectacular and bloody 
triumph over the priests of Baal, fled from the enraged 
Jezebel in such a reaction of moral weakness that he 
begged to die. And although a kindly angel awoke 
and fed him again and again during the heavy sleep of 
despondency under the juniper tree, he was at length 
fully aroused only to feel again the impulse of terror, 
and to flee in “the strength of that meat forty days 
and nights” to the holy mountain. MHoreb, or Sinai, 
quite closes the Valley of Rest and looks like the 
end of the world. There could seem no chance for 
further flight nor need of any, so stern, so savage, 
so lonely is the venerated mountain of the Ancient 
Law. In one of its caves Elijah was lodged. There, 
like Moses, he talked with God and saw God’s glory. 
But he could scarcely be lifted out of despair. The 
extraordinary daring which shortly before had faced a 
wicked court, defied a hostile priesthood, and subdued 
an unfaithful nation, now utterly collapsed. It is not 
always easy for the spirit to be willing when the flesh 
is weak. 


108 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Yet all the while Moses and Elijah had been with 
God. Satan was with Christ. They had the most 
perfect shelter, he the completest exposure. What- 
ever suggestions of wrong were natural in his physical 
extremity, these the Evil One was at hand to press; 
whatever power Jesus showed to rise above physical ex- 
tremity, this the Evil One was ready to pervert. Even 
his divinity did not save him from solicitations to wicked- 
ness; it exposed him to these solicitations. 

He had been saluted at his baptism as Son of God. 
This led to corresponding trials. He was challenged 
as Son of God to make stones bread, and to cast him- 
self from the pinnacle of the temple. The final over- 
ture to accept from Satan the rulership of this world 
was addressed to one who had come into the world to 
be king, and whose consciousness of such a destiny 
was also a consciousness of superhuman fitness. It 
has been said that, if Jesus were Son of God, he could 
not be tempted. The reverse is true. He could not 
have been so tempted had he not been Son of God. 
He was tempted as God’s Son; expressly as such. He 
was tempted in all points like as we are (Heb. 4 : 15), 
but we could not be tempted in all points like as he 
was. His humanity made him like his brethren in 
ordinary exposures (Heb. 2: 17, 18), but his divinity 
made him solitary from first to last in his chief trials. 
We could no more share the extremity of his tempta- 
tions, than “one Simon, a Cyrenian,” could bear the 
real burden of his cross. All our temptations could 
visit him, the most urgent of his could never be ad- 
dressed to us. The horror with which we repel the 
thought of the divine being tempted ought at least to 


CHRIST INSTALLED 1090 


appreciate the humility and devotion which, through ac- 
ceptance of man's limitations, made it possible for the 
tempter to approach the Only-begotten of the Highest. 


If to the question “ Whence”? the answer “ From 
Satan” has not been given, this is because this answer 
would lend no light to our inquiry. Without doubt 
Satan was the tempter; but equally without doubt each 
of his suggestions would of itself at some moment arise 
in the mind of Jesus, and it was important that all the 
issues so raised should be met at the outset. In no 
case could a personal devil receive more direct recogni 
tion than the narrative of the temptation gives to Satan; 
but no diabolic art could offer any mducement to a 
course which it would not be natural for Christ to 
think of, and natural to wish for. The Spirit of Good 
hurried to the conflict with the Spirit of Evil; but the 
field on which they fought, and for which they fought, 
was the field of the desires and the decisions, the mo- 
tives and the choices, of him who was at once the son 
of Mary and the Son of God. In the end it had to be 
Christ that won, or Christ that lost. 


(2) How the Temptations? 

With conservative minds there is a widespread and 
reverent incredulity as to the temptation of the divine 
in Christ. To think it possible seems to invite the still 
more shocking possibility that Jesus might sin. But we 
know that he was tempted; how he could be tempted 
may be plainer if we succeed in penetrating the real 
nature of temptation. 

Without native desires to appeal to, temptation would 


110 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


be impossible. But desire is nothing else than the long- 
ing of organs and faculties to act. The demand of 
bodily organs is appetite, that of mental faculties we 
may call appetence. And we must consider not only 
the several organs and faculties, but also their rela- 
tions. A man is an organism, that is, he is a set of 
related organs. Furthermore, as organs and faculties 
are related in the organism man, so men are related in 
the higher organism society. Indeed, religion itself is 
but an organic, social relation between man and God. 
All human powers, then, find in employment the reason 
for their existence, and nature provides in desire a mo- 
tive to their employment. 

Desire to use a faculty normally is thus not only in- 
nocent but indispensable. Without appetites and appe- 
tences we would act with reluctance, and our powers 
might shrivel through disuse. Had we no native relish 
for food the frequent call to meals would be an insuffer- 
able annoyance. But desires may be either normal or 
abnormal. The use of an organ may be abnormal only 
because disproportionate. The mouth may like to eat 
too much for the stomach. In an entirely normal being 
excess would be checked by a stronger desire for orderly 
organic relations. 

Now among organic impulses in rational beings one is 
the supreme norm for all the others. That normative, 
organic, rational longing is to do the will of God. But 
in the abnormal the desire to do right and please God is 
not so strong as the desire for abnormal indulgence in 
some particular. Temptation, then, is an invitation to 
abnormal desire, a provocation of desire to overstrain a 
faculty, or to disturb the due harmony of faculties. 


CHRIST INSTALLED ee 


How, then, could Christ be tempted? We can see 
that, having all human powers he could feel all sorts of 
proper human desires, for all his faculties would naturally 
demand and really need exercise; and any one power 
might of itself demand too much. Among all his appe- 
tites and appetences, since he was without sin, none 
could be so strong as his love to be right and to please 
his Father. And yet, if we were not mistaken in de- 
ciding that Jesus inherited from his mother a liability 
to temptation, we must also conclude that it was only 
his supreme love for God and righteousness which 
saved him from allowing in himself abnormal desires. 
His human descent might not weaken his love for 
right, but it might strengthen any susceptibility to 
wrong. We can understand, for example, that, if his 
mother’s family had been given for generations to 
strong drink, although without drunkenness, he might 
have inherited a taste for such liquids, and therefore 
have been liable to temptation in this direction. Now 
if Mary’s family had no “family failings,” at least they 
were by nature lovers of themselves more than of God; 
for that is the common lot. Christ, therefore, without 
sharing this excess of self-love, and feeling only due 
regard for himself, might be tempted in some way to 
more than normal self-regard and self-indulgence. In 
other words, he could be tempted to the one sin which, 
as a principle of conduct, includes all sinning. How 
did he escape from the clutch of all temptation ? 


(3) Temptations Withstood 
While the chief stress of temptation seems actually 
to have assailed Jesus as divine, we must make haste 


112 THE, HOLY SPIRIT 


to say that it was as a man he resisted and overcame. 
His divinity drew upon him the trial, but did not secure 
to him the victory. Was he bidden to use creative 
power and turn stones into bread? The good Spirit 
taught him to repel a temptation so far beyond us, in 
the same way we have to repel our meaner tempta- 
tions: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” Was he 
challenged to throw himself from the pinnacle because 
God's angels had a charge concerning him ? His reply 
was one suitable to us, the stern prohibition of Deuter- 
onomy to the murmuring tribes: “Ye shall not tempt 
Jehovah your God” (Deut. 6: 16). Did Satan offer 
him at once the kingdoms which he meant ages after- 
ward to rule? That vision, the last and most alluring, 
a vision which could hardly visit the dreams of a human 
conqueror, was dispelled by the command with which 
fickle Hebrews had been rallied against false gods: 
“Thou shalt fear Jehovah thy God; him shalt thou 
serve” (Deut. 10: 20). The Spirit that taught Jesus 
to say all this, provides us with the same teaching. In 
equipping him with our armor, the Spirit proves the 
sufficiency of that armor for us. 

Here the help received from the Holy Spirit may be 
observed. The Spirit, we may be sure, gave Christ no 
inopportune, officious help, but the Spirit helped him. 
It afforded to him, as to us, the ministry of the truth. 
It kept his mind open to all pertinent reality, and his 
heart thereby full of all fitting desires. If the Evil 
Spirit reminded him with evil intent that he was Son 
of God, the Holy Spirit reminded him with holy pur- 
pose what man owes to God. Weak from long fasting 
his very flesh might have hinted what the tempter 


CHRIST INSTALLED Pts 


patly said, that he could make bread from stones. It 
was a temptation within the range of his own co-ordi- 
nated powers; but the Holy Spirit reminded him of a 
wonder which any man can compass; he can feed on 
the words of God—and how many a fierce hunger have 
those words appeased. On the pinnacle, where his 
weakened body very likely tottered toward a fall, trust 
in his Father might suggest what the tempter truth- 
fully stated, that, if he let himself fall, angels would be 
charged to bear him up. It was a temptation which 
dared obtrude within the Father’s loving embrace; it 
sought to thrust the Son away from his Father’s 
breast; but the Holy Spirit reminded him that one 
must not childishly brave a father who so loved his 
child. Christ’s fitness to rule men, and his very love 
for men, might ask whether it were not well to take at 
once the kingship over the whole world; and that was 
Satan’s offer. It was a temptation which covered the 
widest range of our Lord’s human relations. Every 
calling has its moral exposures. The third was the 
temptation peculiar to his Messiahship. But the Holy 
Spirit, of late so decisively bestowed, did not withdraw 
when the spirit of evil drew near. Christ was equipped 
with full defense against the seductions of his office. 
He was not permitted to forget that he was to rule men 
only by serving God. 

In thus confronting temptation, as in accepting bap- 
tism, Christ shared the common lot, for all men have 
native desires which are capable of excess and misdirec- 
tion. But he also shared our lot in enjoying the guard- 
ianship of the Holy Spirit. If we can imagine that at 


such an emergency the Spirit did not hasten to his aid, 
I 


114 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_certainly Christ did just what the Spirit enables men to 
do. It was with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the 
word of God,” that he withstood the enemy; and to put 
that weapon in our hand, to minister the truth for us, 
is the all-inclusive office of the Holy Spirit to men. In 
resorting to this weapon Christ surely knew its temper 
and tried its edge; and it is in the same way that for 
us also the ministry of the truth establishes convictions 
on the throne of our hearts. Every faculty tests the 
word, and finds its temper true. Intellect is equipped 
with sound thought, sensibility with healthful emotion, 
and will with moral power. The Holy Spirit does all this 
for us; did he less for Christ? Indeed, the Spirit’s offices 
to our Lord are an inspiring example of his benefactions 
to men. Then and now his service is one and the best. 


(4) Typical 

The temptations thus successfully withstood by Jesus 
are generally regarded as typical. In kind they are 
indeed representative of our temptations, although in 
degree our opportunities for evil cannot equal the 
severity of the Master’s trial. Rival interpretations 
have been urged and not without a certain asperity in 
debate. But of these interpretations the most impor- 
tant do not appear to exclude each other. On the con- 
trary, that a temptation is typical in one particular fits 
it to be so in another. All virtues fuse together, and 
James teaches us that all sin is one (2 : 10). 

The first temptation coming on Jesus, when after his 
long fast he began to feel famished (Matt. 4: 2; Luke 
4 : 2), the temptation to command stones into bread, is 
regarded by some as typical of temptations addressed 


CHRIST INSTALLED I15 


to sense. Others take it to be essentially a suggestion 
to use power selfishly. Why not both, if either? It 
would have been a work of sheer creation, a work how 
familiar to Him without whom nothing was made that 
was made! But now he was among men only as one 
that serves. If, then, we are to regard the temptation 
as essentially one to use divine power for himself, surely 
the pangs of hunger would give it poignancy. Or, if it 
was essentially a temptation to meet the tyrannic de- 
mands of sense, how much more imperious the demand 
for one who knew he was quite able to satisfy it. His 
reply was suitable to either interpretation: “Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
ceedeth out of the mouth of God.” In other words, let 
the will of God be done. Jesus would use his extraor- 
dinary powers no otherwise. He had come down from 
heaven not to do his own will, but the will of him 
that sent him (John 6 : 38). His submission to God 
amounted to trust in God. For him every word of God 
was bread and would provide even bread. 

Then the tempter used his loyal trust as the avenue 
for another temptation: “Cast thyself down, for he 
shall give his angels charge concerning thee. It is so 
written. Such is the word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God.” It was a temptation to carry trust 
into presumption and make a venture which God had 
never authorized, still less required. But others take it 
as a temptation to vainglorious display. Jerusalem 
would see Jesus floating in the air, would perhaps own 
him as the Messiah coming gently down from heaven. 
Now if this trial could have the oné meaning, why not 
also the other? Presumptuously to thrust himself on 


T16 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


the miraculous care of God would most likely be also 
an outburst of vanity. Or, if Jesus made a display of 
his angelic aids, so unwarranted a venture would of 
necessity have been a tempting of God. The very 
exaltation of soul, which the pang of hunger might 
serve still further to stimulate, as in the case of many 
ascetics, would expose Jesus, as saintly men are often 
exposed, to a subtle and dangerous suggestion, namely, 
that to make display of their security, while it would gain 
for themselves singular credit with men, might also sin- 
gularly honor God. It would invite faith. What better? 
But a fall from the pinnacle is a far fall. For Jesus to 
yield would have been to turn himself into a tempter, a 
tempter of God. This he would not be. “Thou shalt 
not tempt the Lord thy God,” said he. 

«Well spoken,” quoth Satan. “Do not demand 
from God more than you must. Behold, then, the 
kingdoms of the world and all their glory. Accept 
them from me.” Some say it was an appeal to ambi- 
tion, “the last infirmity of noble minds’’; but others 
see in it the project which has proved most dangerous 
of all to the Lord’s people, the project which turned 
the church for ages into a dependency of Satan. It is 
thus at first the temptation to use other than spiritual 
means for spiritual ends; afterward it becomes a temp- 
tation to despiritualize those ends, that is, to secularize, 
paganize, even to demonize the church. Yet it is pre- 
cisely ambition for worldly authority to which is most 
persuasively addressed the temptation to a complete 
perversion of the church, to turning the very kingdom 
of God into a kingdom of the Evil One. Such an am- 
bition would of itself, sooner or later, unconsciously 


CHRIST INSTALLED 117 


subvert the whole mission of Christ. How indispensa- 
ble his personality to his office. He was to be King, 
but meekness and not ambition should make him King. 
Recognizing the ruinously diabolical character of the 
offer made to him, he abruptly closed the scene: ‘“ Get 
thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship 
the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” 
Jesus triumphed completely over Satan by submitting 
wholly to God. Loyalty to God is at the bottom of all 
righteousness and alone able to disarm temptation. 


(5) Recurrent 

Matthew says that after Satan left him angels came 
and ministered to him (4: 11); but Luke, who seems 
to see most deeply into these initial transactions, notes 
that the devil “departed from Jesus for a season” 
(4:13). Temptation was suspended, but not ended. 
Jesus all his life had to endure the contradiction of sin 
as well as of sinners against himself. The fact seems 
quite overlooked that the wilderness trials were vehe- 
mently and in swift succession renewed near the end of 
the earthly experiences of Jesus. He had suffered from 
hunger in the wilderness ; he was in an agony in Geth- 
semane. There he had been able to endure the pain ; 
here he thrice entreated that the cup might pass from 
him. But as in the wilderness he was able to say, 
“Man shall live by every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God,” in the garden, knowing that he was 
not to live but to die, he steadfastly repeated, “ Not as I 
will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26 : 39). Loyalty to God 
was, as we have seen, the impenetrable armor which 
turned the thrust of every temptation. “God’s will, 


118 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


not mine,’’ was an exorcism always too potent for the 
tempter. On the temple’s pinnacle it had been Satan 
that promised Jesus the angels would take care of him; 
in the garden it was Jesus who said, “ Thinkest thou 
that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall 
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” 
(Matt. 26 : 53.) He had grown used to snares, knew 
they were there, could always detect them and speak 
calmly of them. When he was crucified we hear again 
from chief priests and scribes and elders the peculiarly 
diabolical suggestion, “If he be the King of Israel, let 
him come down from the cross, and we will believe 
him» (Matt. 27.2 '41;'42), 

It is strange that this final temptation, the most 
audacious of all, invited him to do what all Jews were 
expecting from their Messiah, what even the forerunner 
in his prison seemed to be looking for. Again and 
again popular enthusiasm renewed its pressure; but the 
multitude, which would make him a captive in order to 
make him a king, little knew that they were urging 
rudely what the prince of this world had commodiously 
offered in vain. And as little were the contemptuous 
scribes aware that by their mouths Satan was renewing 
his most seductive and wickedest offer, the offer to 
make him king if even at the last Christ would come 
down from the cross. No doubt those mockers would 
have been ready to give him such a kingdom as could 
be won in such a way. No doubt Satan would eagerly 
have taken their offer in earnest and performed for 
Christ that wonder. But this would have been to 
accept of all mockeries the most hideous. It asked the 
Messiah to set at naught his own mission in the hour 


CHRIST INSTALLED 119 


of its culmination and to consent that his career should 
become a futility and folly. But he had received from 
his Father a commandment to lay down his life (John 
10 : 18), nor solicitation nor mockery could divert him 
from obedience. It had been the Holy Spirit that drove 
him into the wilderness and now it is “through the 
eternal Spirit that he offers himself without spot unto 
God”’ (Heb. 9 : 14). 


(6) Outcome 

What then was gained by the formal and by the 
moral installation of Jesus as the Christ? What were 
the results to him of the baptism and the temptation ? 
It is impossible that the effects of such a two-fold 
induction into office should not be incalculably impor- 
tant. Not to lose ourselves in speculative endeavors to 
penetrate the consciousness and character of our Lord, 
we may regard a few results as certain, and these cer- 
tain results will be found most momentous. They fall 
into two classes: results to himself; results to his 
relationships. 


a. For Christ 


He faced his mission. Knowing himself Son of God 
and knowing that the kingdom of heaven was at hand, 
he knew himself the appointed head of that kingdom 
and that he must claim his office. Did he know in 
advance what consequences this claim would involve for 
him? On this point agreement cannot be hoped for. 
It must be admitted that we are not expressly informed. 
But those who believe the divine powers of our Lord 
not to have been under any but a voluntary restraint 


120 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


from day to day will feel sure that Christ from the first 
foresaw his entire career and its consequences; whereas, 
those who believe that the character and mind of our 
Lord still continued to develop in wisdom and in divine 
favor may question whether as yet he foresaw the cross 
and its necessity as the price of his crown. But what 
John the Baptist knew he too must have known, that 
he was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the 
world (John 1:29). It is at least probable that he 
knew the Lamb to be destined for sacrifice. At any 
rate, he faced his mission and he clearly saw how much 
was at present required of him. 

When for this mission the descent of the Spirit 
anointed him, he also then dedicated himself. His 
mind was made up; he saw the will of God and he 
would do the will of God. 

With this active self-consecration he had also learned 
self-restraint. The positive virtue could not spare the 
negative. Self-restraint was a safeguard against those 
deflections of aim and vacillations of procedure which 
so easily and so hurtfully attend an unlooked-for allure- 
ment or annoyance, or alarm, or even fatigue. This 
steadiness and control of himself was the special fruit 
of his victory over temptation. 

For Christ himself, then, the outcome of his dual instal- 
lation was understanding, determination, and self-control. 


b. From Christ 

A fruit of his long trial in the wilderness was that 
Christ could sympathize with the tempted. This gain 
did not fail to be noticed by the reflective writer to the 
Hebrews. It made sure of sympathy just where men 


CHRIST INSTALLED 121 


most need it, that is, where they are weakest. Some, 
indeed, deny that divinity could sympathize with the 
tempted. But divinity would enable Christ merely as a 
looker-on to surpass all men in insight. Guileless 
Nathanael so understood it (John 1 : 49). To this we 
may add that there could be no lack of sympathy on 
the part of one who had “in all points been tempted 
like as we are” (Heb. 4:15). If he had sinned he 
might have had as little charity for his own faults when 
he saw them in others as is man’s mean way. With a 
tainted soul he could not have been so touched with 
pity for our plight as his pure spirit was and is. 

His sympathy enlisted his succor also. Of this we 
are assured in a passage which almost uniquely joins 
the Godward and manward fruits of his mission. Christ 
was ‘in all things made like unto his brethren ” ; 
therefore, Godward he could be “a merciful and faithful 
high priest in things pertaining to God (ca zpd¢ tov Oedr), 
to make reconciliation for the sins of the people” ; 
and manward “in that he himself hath suffered being 
tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted ” 
(Heb. 2:17, 18). Sympathy and succor are the gains 
of the temptation to the relations of Christ with men, 
“not to speak of the fitness it gave him to serve as our 
high priest Godward. 


If we but consider what the situation would have been 
had Christ never in this particular tasted our lot, we 
shall praise the Spirit that led him into and through his 
moral installation. His lonely victory in the wilderness 
made victory out in the world certain in advance. 
From that single combat Christ goes “in the power of 


I22 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


the Spirit”’ (Luke 4 : 14) to fight the campaign through. 
The enemy had been beaten but not destroyed. He 
must even win a seeming success against Christ, for it 
will be only “through death that Christ will be able to 
destroy him that hath the power of death” (Heb. 2: 14), 
and Christ learned in the wilderness to accept whatever 
the will of God should prescribe as conditions of achiev. 
ing his mission and bringing it to a triumphant close. 


CHAPIER IX 
CHRIST AIDED 


HE thought that Christ depended to any degree, 
either personally or officially on the aid of the 
Holy Spirit is unfamiliar and may be unwelcome to 
many. They think of him as having had in himself all 
sufficiency for all needs, ours and his own. But in con- 
fronting the explicit statements of the New Testament 
that the Spirit so aided him, one who is timidly averse 
to all tampering with these mysteries may be reassured 
by considering that the utmost which the Spirit does for 
Christ only illustrates the ordinary yet little regarded 
interrelations of Father, Son, and Spirit. 

These interrelations are fully as compatible with the 
highest as with the lowest view of Christ’s and the 
Spirit’s nature. Each divine Person, to be sure, has 
his own office. No interchange could be thought of. 
We cannot imagine the Holy Spirit as incarnated, nor 
as sending the Father from the Son. And yet no 
function is ascribed to one of the Three exclusively. 
That the Three are undivided in substance thus finds 
fit illustration. For example, God the Father is famil- 
larly the Creator; “He laid the foundations of the 
earth “ (Ps. 104.:'5);) “of him are all things” (1 Cor. 
8:6). But it was “by his Spirit he hath garnished 
the heavens” (Job 26: 13); and yet again, “ Without 
the Word was not anything made that was made”’ (John 


1: 3). God is also the Preserver of all which he has 
123 


124 THE -HOLY SPIRIT 


made (Neh. 9 : 6); but “through the Son all things 
consist’ (Col. 1: 17), and “the Spirit of God is in our 
nostrils’’ (Job 27: 3). To be-the Saviour of men 
would seem the exclusive office of the Son; yet “the 
only wise God is our Saviour” (Jude 25). To renew 
the spirit of a man is the characteristic function of the 
Spirit of God (Titus 3:5); but God himself, without 
distinction of persons, “hath quickened us” (Eph. 2: 
5); the Father and the Son each “quickens whom he 
will” (John 5 : 21); and Christ virtually offers renewal 
where he offers “rest to our souls” (Matt. 11 : 20). 
Co-operation by all does not mean incapacity in any. 
On the contrary, co-operation could not well be want- 
ing if the Three in person are in essence One. We 
are therefore to look for participation by the Holy 
Spirit in the mission of Christ. In no branch, in no 
detail of that mission will the Spirit’s aid be wanting. 
It is not, then, a fact to be forced on orthodox souls 
by dint of appeal to neglected scriptures; it should 
rather be welcomed as an authorized sign that Jesus 
was the Christ, and that Christ was very Son of God. 
Prophecy forecasts the Spirit’s offices to the Messiah, 
and the evangelical narrative did not overlook this fact. 
«Behold my servant whom I have chosen,” quotes 
Matthew (12 : 18) from Isaiah (42:1), “my beloved in 
whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit 
upon him.” For the forerunner, the last of the old- 
time prophets, there were two infallible tokens of the 
Messiah: that the Holy Spirit rested upon him, and 
that he in turn baptized with the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3: 
11). The final duty of the Messiah, in closing out his 
embassy on earth, was “through the Holy Ghost to give 


CHRIST AIDED 125 


commandment unto the apostles whom he had chosen”’ 
(Acts 1:2). Ina word, the co-operation of the Spirit 
with our Lord is ever represented as altogether special 
and signal. We are assured of it again and again, and 
it need not disturb our loyal jealousy for the honor of 
Christ, that the Spirit of God acted an important part 
in the entire course of the personal life of Jesus, and in 
all that was required of the Christ officially. 


1. Personally 

It is doubtful whether a single text, strictly inter- 
preted, answers the question what Jesus personally 
owed to the good offices of the Holy Spirit. Texts 
which declare the Spirit’s part in the official activities 
of Christ are sometimes taken as illustrations of per- 
sonal benefits to Jesus. This is not altogether absurd. 
Jesus was not like Balaam a mouthpiece to be used 
and cast aside. Still, official help is not necessarily 
personal, nor personal help official. The power con- 
ferred by the Spirit might be congruous with the char- 
acter of a prophet, yet not due to his character. It is 
not necessary to believe that, in making Jesus compe- 
tent for functions, the Holy Spirit always strengthened 
and adorned his character. The passages, then, which 
tell us that Christ was endued with power to work 
miracles, or given an anointing to preach the good 
news, or vested with authority which Simon Magus 
tried to buy, the authority to bestow on others the 
wonder-working charisms, these passages, although 
among them is John’s declaration that Jesus received 
the Spirit without measure (John 3: 34), are all de- 
ferred to the topic which may claim them, that of 


126 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


official helps. No text remains to which we may make 
unhesitating appeal to tell us what was the ordinary 
personal relation of the Spirit to Jesus. 

We must have recourse to inference, with due sense 
of its precariousness, and corresponding modesty as to 
its results. But we may begin with an undoubted fact: 
Jesus shared our lot. ‘In all things it behoved him to 
be made like unto his brethren” (Heb. 2:17). If, then, 
the defense against our liabilities 1s in the steady com- 
panionship of the Paraclete; if good counsel to us in 
perplexity is from the Spirit of wisdom and a sound 
mind ; if we know the truth because we are led by the 
Spirit of truth; if righteousness is fostered for us by 
the indwelling Spirit of holiness; if serenity and cour- 
age are ours by the brooding of the Spirit of peace, and 
the good cheer of the Spirit of adoption; if, when the 
case grows desperate, we may at least groan our inar- 
ticulate desires, and can know that even then and thus 
the Spirit is making intercession for us according to 
the will of God; with all this true for us, we do not 
dare perhaps to say that the Spirit’s fellowship and 
help, which are the chief of our present privileges and 
the earnest of our inheritance, were needed for Jesus 
as we need them; but we cannot easily believe that he 
lacked, if we have them. Was his lot in no way more 
exalted than ours? His portion of the Spirit could 
hardly be less. Sometimes we feel that we have alien- 
ated that heavenly companion, but surely Jesus never 
repulsed the Holy Spirit. From the fact that the Holy 
Spirit is given to God’s children we may infer that he 
was given to the Son of God. . 

This inference is supported by a further fact, that 


CHRIST AIDED 127 


the divine in Jesus was in some way limited by the 
human. In what way limited the interests of our 
theme do not require us to decide. Stout Calvinists 
have held that, while divine powers without limit. be- 
longed to Jesus, their employment was limited. Or it 
may be, as others maintain, that the powers of Jesus 
were less than infinite. On either view there would 
be a fitness, and even a need, of the Holy Spirit’s aid. 
Leaving out of account just now all aids in Messianic 
offices, we see that the personal Jesus, in consequence 
of his limitations, whatever they were, must have had 
his liabilities and his needs. 

The most comprehensive statement is the classic pas- 
sage in the Epistle to the Philippians. Here the point 
to be made is practical. We ought to be as mindful 
of each other as Christ Jesus was of us. And to make 
this point Paul opens the mystery of our Lord’s self- 
renunciation. So transcendent a doctrine never had 
another so practical application. Our Lord emptied 
himself of that mode of existence which was peculiar to 
the Godhead, accepting in its place the mode of existence 
which was peculiar to a servant, becoming, that is, like a 
man (Phil. 2: 5-7). That a self-renunciation so extreme 
involved letting go the riches of the universe was its 
least astounding accompaniment, although this result is 
mentioned by Paul (2 Cor. 8:9). A more radical con- 
sequence was that, in becoming a servant like man, the 
Lord of heaven came like man into need of direction and 
support. This need was real, not a mere appearance. 
What he gave up as divine must be made good to him 
by the divine Spirit. If he must obey, as God’s servant, 
he must be guided by the Spirit of God 


128 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Jesus himself made sweeping statements about his 
limitations, and sometimes made them, strangely 
enough, by way of asserting his authority. These pas- 
sages must come under our attention in connection 
with the Holy Spirit’s aids to the official Christ. It 
will be enough just now to notice their peculiarity. 
For example, his reply when the Jews charged him 
with breaking the Sabbath, and making himself equal 
with God. In this reply he singularly and character- 
istically claimed divine power to do everything in con- 
fessing that of his own motion he could do nothing 
(John 5:18 f.). This was true of his teaching also 
(ver. 30). He spoke the words of God (John 3:34), he 
taught the doctrine of God (John 7:16). Who but 
the Spirit taught him? 

How different his way of knowing must have been 
from God’s way we are notified by the fact that only 
the Father knew the day of the Son’s return to earth. 
God knows intuitively, that is, knows the whole and 
every object in it by itself and directly, face to face, as 
the eye knows. If Jesus had known in this way, he 
would have known the date of his future coming, as 
though it were a fact seen by itself. But his knowl- 
edge was in part, like ours, a knowledge of things as 
related; that is, it was in part inferential and limited 
knowledge. But he could not see through the whole 
series of future events to its end in his own reappear- 
ance. At some points, if he was to know, he needed 
the Spirit’s teaching, which teaching he did not at all 
points enjoy. 

The course of his life answers to his own loving pro- 
testation, “ My Father is greater than I” (John 14: 28). 


CHRIST AIDED 129 


Was not infancy for him a period of undeveloped facul- 
ties? And while the doctors in the temple listened to 
his questions and answers, were not Joseph and Mary 
anxiously looking for him, because, like any other lad’ 
of twelve he ought not to be left to shift for himself in 
a strange and crowded city? Was not the subjection to 
‘his parents” which followed natural and wholesome? 
Did he not actually grow, as he seemed to, in wisdom 
and stature, and in favor with God and man? (Luke : 
46-52.) And the daily recurrence of sleep, with its sus- 
pension of rational processes, was this not as real to Jesus 
all his life as weariness was? (Mark 4:38; John 4 0).) 
As he grew, had he only the outer guidance of parents, 
and when he was grown, of the Book ? 

Then was he free from moral limitations? God can- 
not be tempted (James 1 : 13), but Jesus was open to 
all our temptations (Heb. 4:15). Could this have been 
if the divine in him were not hampered by the human? 
What did his prayers imply? Were they only acts of 
communion with God? The occasions for them forbid 
this conjecture. Sometimes he prayed for others; 
sometimes for himself ; always for something to be got 
only by prayer. He prayed that when Peter’s fidelity 
failed his faith might not also fail (Luke 22 : 32)5- Ive 
promised to pray for the sending of the Comforter 
(John 14: 16). He prayed for his disciples as he did 
not pray for the world. He prayed that God would 
keep them from the evil. He prayed for all who 
through them would in the future believe in him. And 
he prayed for himself. Once in an agony he prayed 
that he might be spared the cross. It was to One who 


was able to save him from death. And that prayer was 
K 


130 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


heard; but it was the will of the Father that he should 
die. Long before he had prayed at his baptism, and 
the heavens were opened, and the Spirit came down. 
He went up into a mountain to pray, and the fashion 
of his countenance was altered, his raiment became 
white and glistering, Moses and Elijah came back to 
earth to talk with him, and a voice fell from the over- 
shadowing cloud, “ This is my elect Son” (Luke 9 : 29— 
35). It is Luke who, as usual, lays hold of these sig- 
nificant incidents. He tells us that Jesus prayed all 
night before choosing the Twelve (6 : 12, 13), and it was 
after he had been at prayer that the disciples asked and 
received the brief model for prayer (11 : 1-4). But 
Matthew and Mark also note how he would go apart to 
pray (Matt. 14:23; Mark 1:35). They allow us, they 
even require us, to suppose that with Jesus as with us 
there was a moral need of prayer. 

It is considerations like these which show how com- 
pletely Jesus entered into our estate, and thus certify 
that the life of Jesus illustrated the service of the Holy 
Spirit to men, as well as the service that men owe to God. 
If Jesus had no such need, the Spirit could hardly seem 
indispensable in our case. If that need were not met 
for him, what assurance could there be that it would be 
met for us? That the Spirit’s presence was so plainly 
shown in emergencies, would seem to justify the con- 
viction which modern study of Jesus has reached, that 
for ordinary occasions, if during the public life of Jesus 
there were such, the ordinary offices of the Holy Spirit 
were never wanting. Jesus owed his nativity to the 
Spirit of God, and all his life, we may believe was trans- 
fused by that ever-renewed divine energy. If it was so 


CHRIST AIDED 131 


for him, it may be so forus. If the aid of the Holy One 
could be so momentous then, it is indispensable now. 


2. Officially 

As already stated it is not left us to infer or presume 
the relations of the Holy Spirit to the Christ. On this 
matter the New Testament evidently seeks to assure our 
faith by assuring us of his aids. These aids will extend 
to all branches of his mission. He was helped— 


(1) In Teaching 


This point was covered by his sweeping protestations 
to the Jews: “I can of mine own self do nothing; as 
I hear I judge” (John 5 : 30); “As the Father hath 
taught me I speak these things” (8 : 28); and espe- 
cially his searching declaration to the Twelve: “The 
words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but 
the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works ”’ 
(14:10) It is not the highest imaginable claim. Aid 
like this was promised to the apostles: “It is not 
ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which 
speaketh in you” (Matt. 10:20). Such aid made Christ 
and his messengers prophets and renders the activity 
of the Spirit certain in all these cases alike. 

But the parity goes no further. As to the copious- 
ness of the inspiration it was said of the Master, “He 
whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God; for 
God giveth not the Spirit by measure” (John 3 : 34). 
Of Christ alone and his supernal knowledge could the 
Baptist declare, “No man hath seen God at any time; 
the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the 
Father, he hath declared him” (John 1 : 18). Nor 


132 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


would any other prophet claim for himself what Christ 
claimed, or what the evangelists claimed in his behalf: 
«No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came 
down from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in 
heaven” (John 3 : 13); or most persuasively, while 
most authoritatively: ‘No one fully knows the Son 
except the Father; nor does any one fully know the 
Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son may 
choose to reveal him” (Matt. 11 : 27). 

However immediate and full the Son’s knowledge of 
the Father, the Holy Spirit not only taught through 
Christ, but taught Christ himself. As a youth Jesus 
was no doubt tutored in the Old Testament. It has not 
of late occurred to any one that this was inconsistent 
with his divinity. He was areal boy. If as such, and 
later he could be subject to his parents in Nazareth, 
how much more subject to the truth as set forth by the 
Spirit of God in the ancient Oracles? Then when it 
came his turn to teach why should not the Spirit min- 
ister the truth through him? If there still seem any 
incongruity between direct knowledge of God and 
knowledge by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the more 
that incongruity is pressed the more rapidly it will dis- 
appear. Emphasize to the utmost that Christ must 
intuitively know God, and know God most intimately il 
he is himself God; then on the other hand insist as 
sharply as possible on the importance to him of the 
Spirit’s communications ; and now two things appear in 
ever-growing distinctness: First, if the divine consti- 
tutes the personal Christ by union with the human, our 
Lord will be sedulously kept by the Holy Spirit in com- 
munion with the Father; secondly, if he whom we call 


CHRIST AIDED 133 


the Son of God was before the incarnation an equal 
Person in the Godhead, then, pre-eminently then, the 
divine Spirit would be in effect what its name ever im- 
plied, the eternal outbreathing to Son from Father, and 
inbreathing to Father from Son. 

When the angry Jews attempted to kill Jesus because 
“he said God was his Father, making himself equal 
with God” did his reply seem to them to renounce his 
equality or to affirm it again? He said, “The Son can 
do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father do ; 
for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son 
likewise”’ (John 5:19). To disclaim independence this, 
just this, was to claim identity. When the Son is pre- 
sented not as an ordinary mouthpiece, but as the very 
Word of God, then he is with God and is God. 

After the earthly embassage of Christ is closed it will 
be the Spirit’s turn not to “speak from himself, but 
whatever he shall hear to speak”; yes, and to “ glorify 
Christ, to receive of Christ’s and show it.” This for 
the reason which the Master gave, entering into the 
depths of the matter: ‘ All things that the Father has 
are mine; therefore the Spirit shall receive of mine, and 
show it unto you” (John 16: 13-15). May we not feel 
persuaded that-meantime Jesus was reminded of his 
own, led into deeper understanding of his own, qualified 
better to show his own to men when the Spirit took of 
the Father’s and showed it unto him ? 


(2) In Miracles ie 

There is no ground for questioning that the miracles 
of Christ were ascribed by him and by all who believed 
in him, to the Spirit of God. Whatever else they might 


134 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


mean this lesson they must first teach, that God was 
with Christ. It was a lesson to the dullest ear and it 
opened the ear for further instruction. Whatever 
power resided in Christ himself it was not so important 
yet to exhibit this as to prove that God was with him. 
And for most people this first lesson of his miracles re- 
mained the last. The congenitally blind man to whom 
Christ gave sight could not miss such a point. “If this 
man were not of God he could do nothing ’”’ ; and this 
made him ready to accept Jesus as Son of God so soon as 
Jesus was ready to declare himself (John 9 : 33, 37, 38). 
When about to call Lazarus from the tomb Christ will 
first have it understood that God hears him (John II : 42). 
From the time of his baptism and temptation the mir- 
acles of Christ are: referred to “the power of the. 
Spirit’ with which he returned into Galilee, and his 
fame began (Luke 4 : 14); and years later, when Peter 
carried the good news to a Gentile, Christ was still to 
him one whom God had “anointed with the Holy 
Ghost and with power’ (Acts 10 : 38). If Christ 
would give his followers private justification for their 
faith it was by citing what Isaiah had foretold concern- 
ing the servant of Jehovah, that the Spirit of God 
should be upon him (Matt. 12: 18); or if those who 
were ready to blaspheme the Holy Spirit could be pub- 
licly checked it would be by the thought that, when 
Christ by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then the 
kingdom of God had come unto them (ver. 28). 

We have here to recall and bear in mind that in con- 
nection with miracles the Spirit of God meant the power 
of God. The custom of both Testaments is uniform on 
this point until we reach in passing the Master’s 


CHRIST AIDED 135 


promise that by the personal Paraclete believers should 
do works greater than his own (John 14:12), and Paul’s 
exposition of the Spirit’s work to the Corinthians, 
which as was noted above (Chapter II.), casually recog- 
nizes indeed that the Spirit is a person, but prevail- 
ingly offers his energy as impersonal. The Master’s 
own miracles took place at a period so early in the doc- 
trine of the Spirit as not to furnish any hint of the idea 
that Christ wrought his miracles by aid of the Third 
Person in the Godhead, rather than by that impersonal 
power which served the same purpose with the prophets. 
This of course is not to deny that the Third Person did 
this office alike for Christ and his old-time messengers, 
but it is to recognize that no such personal meaning is 
anywhere expressed in the biblical record. 


However, the matter of chief concern to present day 
study is not a settlement of questions about the per- 
sonal or impersonal meaning of the title Holy Spirit 
in connection with miracles. One most impressive, 
if not imperative, question is Christological. In work- 
ing miracles did Christ depend on the aid of the Spirit 
of God as completely as did the old-time prophets and 
new-time apostles? Or was the power of God which 
“the title Spzvzt of God implies, a power resident in 
“Christ and distinctly his own? It should be admitted 
to begin with that by Spzrzt of God could never be 
understood a power which was the miracle-worker’s 
own. It must always be frankly recognized as a power 
specially conferred. And yet this quite obvious inter- 
pretation, this recognition of a usual meaning as the 
present meaning, does not answer the question whether 


136 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Christ had no greater power of his own than a prophet 
or an apostle had. 

Not a few oppose a special claim for the Nazarene 
prophet. They may not deny, they perhaps maintain 
his proper divinity, but all unite in holding that when he 
became a man he so thoroughly emptied himself of divine 
power and prerogatives, became so strictly and exclu- 
sively like other men a servant, that not only must he 
like them take orders and obey, but must share their 
weakness and dependence (Phil. 2 : 6-8). A recent es- 
timate of Christ ascribes to him more than ordinary, 
yet not unprecedented human powers. This “ New 
Thought” declares that a few rare spirits, quite apart 
from other good men in piety and virtue, reveal a strange 
mastery over the infirmities, both moral and physical, 
which are found in other men. Jesus being wholly, or 
mostly untainted by sin, thus became lord of life and 
could be popularly represented as conqueror of one that 
had the power of both sin and death. 

But if the record expressly enough teaches that the 
Holy Spirit wrought miracles through Christ it just as 
distinctly ascribes to him power which no other man 
ever possessed. While he was like his apostles in en- 
_joying the aid of the Spirit, he was unlike them in being 
himself a source of power over human ills. Apostles 
never said of themselves, even when the sick were 
healed by handkerchiefs and aprons taken from their 
person (Acts 19: 12), what Christ said of himself, «I 
perceive that virtue has gone out of me” (Luke 8 : 46). 
“Why look ye so earnestly on us,’ demanded Peter, 
“as though by our own power or holiness we had made 
this man to walk? . . . His name, through faith in 


CHRIST AIDED 37 


his name hath made this man strong” (Acts 3: 12, 16). 
No apostle claimed that miracles were given or not as 
he chose; but Christ said to the leper, “I will, be thou 
clean’ (Matt. 8 : 3). Of all his miracles the most im- 
pressive in itself and in its circumstances was the raising 
of Lazarus. But when the faith of Martha ran forward 
to she knew not what, and ventured so far as to say, 
“Even now whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will 
give thee,” yet drew back from a hint that her brother 
would rise again before the last day, can any one doubt 
that precisely what Jesus meant was to have himself 
accepted as the source of life? “I am the resurrection 
and the life” (John 11 : 22-25). -The stilling of the 
tempest when it first took place fairly raised with his 
fellow-voyagers the question what manner of man Jesus 
was (Matt. 8 : 27); but occurring a second time, it left 
no question ; they worshiped him as Son of God (Matt. 
14: 33). If any miracle wrought by an apostle had, or 
would have been allowed to have, such an effect on his 
instructed and familiar followers, which was the miracle 
and which the apostle? But if our Lord’s disciples had 
held their peace the “ floods would have clapped their 
hands” and the winds would have cried out. 

How, then, are we to construe the association of the 
Holy Spirit with our Lord’s own power in the working 
of miracles? It is a possible but a non-natural supposi- 
tion that Christ had, indeed, superhuman powers, but 
that a deficiency in these needed to be supplemented 
by the Holy Spirit. Hardly less factitious would be 
the notion that the Holy Spirit was needed at first, but 
that the Lord’s own powers steadily grew toward un- 
aided adequacy for all his purposes. A partial, and in 


138 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


no way offensive, explanation would be that the Spirit 
wished to co-operate with Christ, in order by co-opera- 
tion to make it plain that God acknowledged him (John 
10 : 38). Such an association of the Master and the 
Spirit would leave still open the question, What could 
Christ unaided have accomplished? The question is 
idle and must be left unanswered. To be sure, we 
may always fall back on the co-action of the three 
Persons in the Godhead. No one of them was isolated. 
In particular the entire course of the Master’s life re- 
vealed a close union with God. And so if the Spirit’s 
aid was not necessary at least it was fitting. 


Being events out of the ordinary, miracles always 
challenge attention. As unmistakably due to super- 
human power they turn attention to God. They put 
the question, What is his will? Sometimes they answer 
it. As aids to the theocracy they often went as straight 
to their end as any act of a human king. Under the 
new dispensation the kingdom was not of this world, 
and the miracles which attended its introduction were 
directed toward spiritual ends. Indeed, it may be said 
that, addressed almost exclusively to the mind though 
wrought upon the body, the miracles of the New Testa- 
ment were meant for teaching. Unlike the greater mir- 
acles of the Old Testament they harmed no one; they 
offered benefits to all, and so taught that God is good. 
If they could persuade men to trust in the love of God, 
that is what the gospel does. If we Christians love God 
it is “ because he first loved us” (1 John 4: 19). 

Often the lesson was more specific, as when miracles 
certified that God had sent a new teacher. The widow 


CHRIST AIDED 139 


of Zarephath, when Elijah restored her boy to life, 
“knew that the word of Jehovah in his mouth was 
truth” (1 Kings 17: 24). Miracles certified Christ to be 
a prophet. Nicodemus saw this and said it (John 3: 2). _ 
The man who had been born blind put the Jews in a 
rage by insisting on this same point (John g : 30-34). 
Christ too claimed that his works were his Father’s 
credential to him as a teacher (John 5 : 36); and when 
it came to raising Lazarus, the most which our Lord 
hoped for from the people that stood by, was to believe 
that God had sent him and now heard him (John 11 : 42). 
To the sister of Lazarus the lesson of miracles was 
far more striking. The housewifely Martha, if she 
would believe, should see the glory of God (v. 40). 
Christ, who could be heard and seen with the eyes and 
looked at and handled, would now prove himself to be 
the resurrection and the life (v. 25). How far did such 
a miracle fall short of telling the Good News? How 
far short the miracle which proved that Christ had 
power on earth to forgive sin? (Matt.9:6.) And when 
Jesus was in danger of a stoning because, as the Jews 
said, he “ made himself God,” did he not appeal to his 
works for justification even of such a claim as that? 
(John 10 : 33-38.) On this very point, that to see 
him was to see the Father, Jesus asked his disciples to 
believe “for the very works’ sake” (John 14 : 9-11). 
Above and beyond all the miracle of his resurrection 
teaches what Christ is. But this point must be a little 
deferred. So far we find that the New Testament 
miracles, in particular those of Christ, teach at large 
how trustfully we should bear ourselves toward God, 
how confidently we may receive his messengers ; above 


140 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


all they show us what we should think of Christ. To 
make us sure on such a matter as this no irruption of 
divine power could be too extraordinary. No breach of 
nature’s continuity could be too large a price to pay for 
the transformation of man’s lot and man’s aims and 
man’s hopes and man’s destiny. For miracle is not im- 
practicabie to God. To believe in it is not absurd. 


There is something sacred in the laws of nature. 
Viewed at large they constitute the cosmic order which 
reveals God, and which by its harmony reveals that there 
is but one God. Viewed more narrowly laws of nature 
are the fixed properties of things, are all that make one 
class of objects differ from another class. To break 
natural laws would be to violate the constitution of na- 
ture. It would be to treat an object according to what 
it is not. That is, it would be an attempt to make a 
thing something else. This is self-contradictory. It is 
meaningless. It is utter absurdity, and God cannot be 
absurd. If he could be inclined to sacrifice the uni- 
versal order which reveals him, still he could not suc- 
ceed in violating a law of nature; for even God cannot 
make a thing to be and not to be at the same moment. 
The laws of nature, once nature is framed, are sacred. 
To violate them from one point of view would be sac- 
rilege ; from another point of view would be impossible. 

But who finds anything sacred in the course of na- 
ture? I break it myself, I keep breaking it all the 
while. Everything that I do which inanimate nature 
could not do is an interruption of the course of nature, 
if it is no more than taking a step or drawing a long 
breath. Any beast can break into the course of nature. 


CHRIST AIDED I4I 


A bird or a beaver does it when it builds its house. A 
bird or a beaver does it when it gathers food and eats it 
or feeds it to its young. A mere animal constantly 
violates the course of nature as much as God does by a 
miracle. The objection that miracle is irrational is an 
irrational objection. 

Influenced by scientific deference to order in nature 
not a few present-day theologians try hard to find for 
miracle a place in nature. They construe it as only a 
prodigy, due to unknown physical causes. It is an 
eclipse of the humdrum sun; it is the rush of a comet, 
no one can tell whence or whither, across our well- 
ordered sky. But an eclipse is no more a miracle than 
the full moon, and a comet is even less amazing than a 
fixed star. To undo miracles by finding for them some 
provision in nature might not be impossible, but when 
so undone they are no longer miracles and do no good. 

A miracle is really what it seems, a departure from 
the course of nature, and unmistakably due to super- 
natural power. It is not, however, a violation nor a 
suspension of natural law. The course of nature is a 
series of events; natural law is the order followed in 
the production of the several events. The course of 
nature takes place; law never takes place. The course 
of nature is due to physical energy ; law is the method 
of energy. Energy is a cause, the course of nature is 
an effect ; law is neither a cause nor an effect, it is the 
way in which causes produce effects. The course of 
nature, then, is a series of effects or events in the 
physical sphere, produced by physical causes, each 
operating according to its own law. A miracle occurs 
when some power superior to man’s interrupts the 


142 THE? HOLY. SPIRIT. 


course of events by counteracting or diverting a phys- 
ical energy. But law is no more suspended when God 
works a miracle than when a man produces an artificial 
result. My will has an inexplicable ability—an ability 
as utterly beyond understanding as any creative act of 
God—to use the energy stored in my body, so as to back 
up a flowing stream, to trim a ship’s sails to the breeze, 
to get up steam in an engine, to build bridges and cities, 
to prepare sumptuous clothing and feasts and statues 
and paintings and statecraft and war, to do all the arti- 
ficial things which are quite as completely beyond the 
power of nature as to cure leprosy by a touch, or to 
raise the dead with a word. Those are man’s artifices, 
miracles are God’s artifices. His power, which is his 
Spirit, can work them if he finds occasion, and the 
mission of Christ furnished an imperative occasion. 


(3) In Suffering 

The teachings of Christ drew upon him growing 
enmity from Jewish sects and leaders; his miracles 
precipitated the catastrophe. What he was used to 
saying was hateful alike to ceremonious Pharisees, 
rationalistic Sadducees, and worldly Herodians. If the 
mystical Essenes had come in contact with him their 
asceticism would no doubt have been affronted by the 
liberty he used. Those who spoke for the disciples of 
John and of the Pharisees raised against him this very 
objection (Luke 5 : 33). The objection which all felt 
to his teaching was its lofty and aggressive spirituality ; 
his objection to the doctrine of the sects was its low 
and perverse unreality. The objection on both sides 
was thorough-going. Not that the Jewish sects were 


CHRIST AIDED 143 


irreligious, but their religion was perverted; not that 
Christ was austere, but to him an unspiritual religion 
was unreal. He knew that God requires truth in the 
inward parts. In face of such reality their religion was 
hypocrisy, perhaps only half-consciously ; and yet the 
more zealous they were the more hypocritical. Tosuch 
a state of facts what could his doctrine offer except de- 
nunciation? And it is remarkable that his most terrible 
reproaches were aimed at the most religious of the Jews. 

His miracles exasperated the opposition. Without 
miracles the opposition would have been unimportant, 
because his following would have been unimportant. 
The populace might have relished now and again his 
bold rebukes of their religious guides, but it was his 
mighty works that drew all the world after him (John 
12:19) and made the council more than half afraid 
that the Romans would come and take away their place 
and nation (John 11 : 47, 48). 


The Spirit that taught and wrought through Christ 
thus led him up to the final trial, as it had led him 
into the trial of the wilderness. Only one passage in 
the New Testament distinctly states that the Holy 
Spirit had a share in the ultimate oblation. This is, 
of course, a passage which represents the offering as 
made by himself, “If the blood of bulls and of goats, 
and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanc- 
tifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more 
shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit 
offered himself without spot to God, purge your con- 
science from dead works to serve the living God?” 
(Heb. 9 : 13, 14.) There is little agreement. among 


144 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


exegetes as to the Spirit’s part in the offering, because 
there is little agreement as to what is meant by e¢ernal 
Spirit. Is it the Third Person? Is it the divine nature 
of Christ? Is it the total Christ? No one, so far as I 
have seen, has undertaken to determine first what so 
unique an Epistle means by Holy Spirit. It would seem 
fitting to let this priceless though peculiar document 
interpret itself. 

The word spirit is found but twelve times in the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. In two instances it refers to 
angels (1:7, 14), in three to the spirits of men (4:12; 
12:9, 23), leaving but seven occasions on which it 
refers to the Spirit of God. In three of these the 
reference is unquestionably to the Spirit which inspired 
the Old Testament (3:7; 9:8; 10:15). Here is 
nothing to exclude the New Testament idea of the Third 
Person; but there is nothing to include it, and it would 
seem reasonable to understand an Old Testament func- 
tion of the Spirit in the Old Testament sense of Spirit ; 
that is, as an impersonal influence from God. Besides 
our text, then, there remain but three references to the 
Spirit of God. In approaching these we are bound to 
keep in mind the principle that an established meaning 
is always presumably the present meaning of a word or 
expression, and that this presumption is conclusive 
against every new meaning which is without unequivocal 
support. It ought to be added that the Epistle to the 
Hebrews is the last document of all the New Testa- 
ment which would attach novel meanings to Old Tes- 
tament terms. It undertakes to show that the ancient 
dispensation found its purposed fulfillment in the new. 
But it does not attempt this by juggling with words. 


CHRIST AIDED 145 


It deals with ideas. It brings forward old-time words 
in the old-time sense, and shows that the law, when 
legitimately and fully understood, reached its flower. 
and its fruitage in the new and imperishable gospel. | 

Thus three of the seven references to the Spirit of 
God are distinctly references to the Old Testament 
work of the Spirit, and three are left to aid in fixing 
the meaning of the fourth. Of these last three one 
refers to the witness which God gave to his own envoys 
“by signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and distri- 
butions of the Spirit, according to his own will” (2 : 4). 
Instead of an implication that the distributed Spirit is 
a person, such a thought is obviously forced, especially 
as the distribution is not as the Spirit wills, but as God 
wills. Here at least the meaning of an apportioned 
influence is plain and seemly. The two remaining pas- 
sages refer to the sin which cannot be forgiven. Of 
these the first speaks of the apostasy of those “who 
have been enlightened, have tasted of the heavenly gift 
and become partakers of the Holy Spirit” yet fall away 
(6 : 4-6); the second warns against the more shocking 
criminality of “trampling under foot the Son of God. . . 
and doing despite to the Spirit of grace” (10 : 29). If, 
at the outset, we had found the author of this Epistle 
familiar with the personality of the Spirit, these pas- 
sages might, no doubt, be interpreted in harmony with 
that view ; but they do not at all require it. Their sig- 
nificance is as amply provided for as in the case of blas- 
phemy against the Holy Spirit (pp. 16, 17) by the idea 
which we found in all the other texts, the Old Testa- 
ment idea of the Spirit as a special influence from God. 


It does not appear why that idea should here be de- 
L 


146 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


- parted from, or what evidence can be cited for the intro- 
duction into this Epistle anywhere of the doctrine of the 
personal Paraclete. 

If, then, the personal Paraclete is in mind, when our 
unknown expounder of new things by old tells us that 
Christ “offered himself through the eternal Spirit,” it 
is the only passage in the Epistle where the personal 
Spirit seems to be thought of. It really is proper to 
ask what this passage would mean if it occurred in the 
Old Testament. Except for its reference to the blood 
of Christ it would not be unintelligible there. We recog- 
nize at once that it distinguishes against ceremonial 
righteousness and in favor of spiritual service, as in the 
well-known passage in Micah (6:8). Ceremonial sanc- 
tity belongs to the flesh, and is produced by application 
of blood to the flesh. If our passage had only blood to 
contrast with blood, as the direct means of sanctification, 
how would the spiritual result be provided for? It isa 
need at this point which occasions the reference to the 
self-oblation of Christ and to the participation of the 
eternal Spirit. When we follow the writer in working 
out the antithesis, three points of superiority are seen 
in the New Testament offering: first, the blood of 
Christ is in itself worth more than the blood of bulls 
and goats; secondly, the offering was made by co-opera- 
tion of the eternal Spirit ; thirdly, the high priest offered 
himself. The eternal Spirit was an ennobling and ena- 
bling influence from God, which made the offering more 
than one of blood. An offering through the eternal 
Spirit, even if it were only an offering of blood, was a 
spiritual offering. These points made the challenge fit- 
ting : How much more than any animal sacrifice availed 


CHRIST AIDED 147 


for cleansing human flesh, would this spiritual sacrifice 
avail to consecrate human spirits ? 

There would seem, then, no reason to find here a 
reference to the Third Person or to the Second Person 
in the Godhead, but only such co-operation in his pas- 
sion as Christ received from the Spirit in all his work. 


The oblation through the Holy Spirit, although ex- 
pressly mentioned in but a single text, ought to relieve 
a painful surmise connected with another unique pas- 
sage; namely, that God at the last moment forsook his 
Son, and even poured out on him the wrath due to hu- 
man sin. That God actually abandoned his Son is a 
not unnatural interpretation of the outcry which Mat- 
thew and Mark leave on record in its peculiarly touch- 
ing literalness: El, El, lama sabachthant (Matt. 27 : 
46; Mark 15 : 34); but the daring and awful conjecture 
that God was full of anger against Christ has no shadow 
of scriptural support. It is sheer theological audacity. 
It illustrates how irreverent against the Father the ut- 
most reverence for Christ can be, until it is no longer 
true that he who honors the Son honors the Father who 
sent him (John 5 : 23). The prophecy of Isaiah is not for- 
gotten: ‘We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, 
and afflicted. . . It pleased the Lord to bruise him : 
he hath put him to grief . . . thou shalt make his soul 
an offering for sin” (53:4, 10). But any one familiar 
with the Old Testament idiom is well aware that God 
is said himself to do whatever befalls his people. As 
Isaiah has it, “The Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, 
the staff in whose hand is mine indignation ” (Isa. 10: 
5); while the more familiar psalm runs: “ Deliver my 


148 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


soul from the wicked which is thy sword, from men 
which are thy hand” (Ps. 17:13, 14). While, there- 
fore, with the thorough-going Hebrew faith in God’s 
overruling the little company of harried disciples could 
lift up their voice and say to high heaven, “ Herod, 
Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel 
were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand 
and thy counsel determined before to be done,” this 
did not hinder Peter from exactly dividing the responsi- 
bility : “Him, being delivered by the determinate coun- 
sel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by 
wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 4 : 27, 
28; 2:23). One must wonder how even a commercial 
view of atonement, the theory of guzd pro quo, so much 
suffering by Christ for so much pardon to the elect, 
could lead to the dreadful fancy that God was angry 
when his Son became obedient even unto death. How 
could any one miss what Jesus himself said: “ There- 
fore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my 
life” ? (John Io : 17.) 

It is not even necessary to believe that God hid his 
face from Christ at the last moment. It is necessary 
only to admit that Christ no longer saw the Father’s 
face. What the prophet foretold about men and Christ 
was true: “We hid as it were our faces from him; he 
was despised and we esteemed him not” (Isa. 53 : 3). 
One could wish that human sin had spared itself that 
shame. It was we that made him an offering for sin, 
and when we did it, we esteemed him not. But why 
should we think the Father too forsook him? No 
doubt at the last Christ felt forsaken. No doubt he 
felt for a moment the chill and horror of the outer dark- 


CHRIST AIDED 149 


ness. There was enough to account for this, without 
saying that the Father turned away his face. And 
here the unique passage in the Hebrews comes to end 
our doubts. If the eternal Spirit took a part in the 
final offering of Christ so important that the offering 
may be described as made “through the Spirit,” it is 
incredible that the Father withdrew his countenance. 
Any explanation ever offered would be less violent than 
that. The sacrifice was made unto God; if it was ac- 
ceptable, how could he now be rejecting it? It was an 
act of obedience to him; how could he turn from that 
last proof of loyalty? It was made through the opera- 
tion of his own Spirit ; how refuse his countenance to 
what his Son and his Spirit were jointly engaged in? 
Christ might lack the sense of the Spirit’s presence, as 
we do while he is helping us. Christ might lose sight 
of the Father’s face; why not so share our lot? But 
that is all. He felt it was so; but it was not so. The 
darkness shut down upon him that the night may be 
light about his people. Through the eternal Spirit he 
offered himself without spot unto God, that we may 
turn from all dying to living, from all unreality to re- 
ality, and in the completion of his spiritual service find 
the beginning of ours. “Christ hath redeemed us from 
the curse of the law... that we might receive the 
promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3 : 13, 14). 


We have found the passage just discussed to be 
unique in one particular; it alone states that the Holy 
Spirit aided Christ to offer himself on the cross. In 
taking leave of this passage we notice that it is most 
nearly unique in ascribing the new life in men to the 


150 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


offering of Christ unto God. As in the case of bulls 
and goats, sprinkling with blood merely purges away 
defilement ; if the sacrifice of Christ does more, if it re- 
releases from dead works, that is, legalistic obedience, 
unto real service of the living God, we must ascribe this 
manward efficiency to the Holy Spirit. Through the 
Spirit the sacrifice was offered to God, by the Spirit it 
is made effectual in us. But this is a result more famil- 
iarly traced to the life of Christ than to his death, and 
to his life as it began in his triumph over death. 


(4) In Victory 

His resurrection was his victory. Who gave Christ 
this victory? By whom was he raised from the dead ? 
Any sufficient answer to this question will once more 
illustrate the New Testament’s characteristic view of 
the tie between Father, Son, and Spirit. So evidently 
does it regard them as having a relative distinctness 
with essential identity, a functional independence with 
causal oneness, that we need not wonder at the grasp 
laid on Christian faith by the able but awkward attempts 
of theology to philosophize the whole matter. The 
resurrection of our Lord is the strong tower of Christi- 
anity. The sense of power, which it has imparted from 
the beginning, prevails over all corruptions in life, all de- 
fections in doctrine, all inroads of skepticism. While 
faith in the resurrection abides, Christianity is secure 
against internal disorder and external attack. And 
faith in the resurrection is virtually belief in the Trinity. 

In seven or eight cases the resurrection of our Lord 
is spoken of as a fact, but not referred to its origin. 
This is what might be looked for wherever attention is 


CHRIST AIDED I5I 


centered on the occurrence. It is found in predictions 
(Luke o)22 5) Acts 26 : 23), in references to what fol- 
lowed (Rom. 4 : 25; 6:9), or to what depended on the 
resurrection as matter of fact (1 Cor. 15 : 16,17; 2 Tim. 
2:8). Once it is represented as in itself inevitable. It 
was not possible, said Peter, that Christ should be 
holden of death (Acts 2:24). The interest of. this 
statement is not lessened, it is rather increased by the 
fact that the passage is-one of those which refer the 
resurrection directly to God. For this shows how that 
which Christ in the nature of the case was bound to 
accomplish was actually brought about by the co-action 
and leading of the Father. There are some twenty-five 
texts which make God the agent. This is indeed the 
ordinary representation. It grounds our ultimate hopes 
on the ultimate reality. In two curiously contrasted 
verses Paul ascribes the resurrection of Christ to God as 
Father. Ina winsome figurative reference to baptism 
he writes that, if we have escaped from death and are 
to walk in the glory of a new life, it will be as Christ 
also was “raised from the dead by the glory of the 
Father” (Rom.6: 4). Or if, stern against the effront- 
ery of a false gospel, and rigid with the authority of his 
heaven-sent message, Paul would cite for his apostolate 
a source to which every believer must bow, it will be, 
full-phrased and full-panoplied, “ Jesus Christ and God 
the Father, who raised him from the dead” (Gal. 1 : 1). 

Twice the Master openly announced that he would 
raise himself from the dead. The earlier instance was 
memorable and was cited against him at his trial. It 
was at the first Passover of his public life. He had 
scourged the traders from the temple and gave a sign 


152 THE HOLY ‘SPIRIT 


of his authority, that if they destroyed this temple he 
would raise it again in three days. Often and often the 
New Testament claims for Father or for Spirit a part 
in what Christ does; this time Christ for once claims as 
his own act that which Spirit and Father do (John 
2:19). The second announcement was also by anticipa- 
tion. When Christ was in point of fact put to death, men 
did it and took the whole responsibility. It would have 
been a thing for derision if he had said then and there 
“T lay down my life of myself; no man taketh it from 
me.” Precisely so when he rose, the Father’s agency, 
and even the share of the angels was too obvious to 
make it the fit time for any reference to our Lord’s 
own power over death. But in that culminating period, 
when the catastrophe rapidly drew near, then Christ 
might well be careful to show how little he could be 
taken by surprise (John 13: 19), and how all which 
was to befall him belonged to his mission. “I have 
authority,” said he, “to lay down my life, and I have 
authority to take it again. This commandment I re- 
ceived from my Father” (John 10: 18). 

What share in the resurrection is assigned to the 
Holy Spirit? On every account it must be kept in 
view that the Spirit of God is the energy of God going 
forth to do his will. This meaning, thoroughly estab- 
lished in the elder Scriptures, is in no way brought into 
question by ascribing personality to the Spirit. The 
teaching of the Master did not tend to disparage the 
Spirit but greatly to exalt him. The New Testament’s 
account of the Spirit’s offices but gives definiteness and 
enlargement to our view of them. This consideration 
of itself warrants ascribing the resurrection of Christ 


CHRIST AIDED 153 


to the Spirit of God. The Spirit does whatever the 
power of God does, for the Holy Spirit is the power 
of the Highest. 

But there are a few passages concerning the resur- 
rection in which this always underlying idea comes to 
light. “According to the flesh,” said Paul, «Christ 
was made of the seed of David ; according to the spirit 
of holiness he was declared to be the Son of God with 
power, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:3, 4). 
The resurrection was a powerful argument for the di- 
vine Sonship of Christ. It was an argument afforded 
by the Spirit. It was afforded by the Spirit when the 
Spirit achieved the resurrection. This would seem 
to be an exposition of that weighty, many-claused, 
singular, Pauline sentence, at once free from arbitrari- 
ness and logically coherent. If the explanation is soo 
intelligible, that may bring it into doubt. 

The entirely explicit teaching of Paul is that those in 
whom the Spirit dwells are to be raised by that in- 
dwelling Spirit (Rom. 8:11). So much is clear. The 
inference is easy, that the sun which is to mature the 
harvest is the same that ripened the first fruit (1 Cor. 
15: 20). When we are quickened together with Christ 
‘is it in reply to another voice ? 


The office of the Holy Spirit in raising our Lord 
throws a clear and gentle light over the too little con- 
sidered problem as to what the resurrection accom- 
plished. We are given to regarding it as a prodigious 
miracle, providing for whatever a marvel in the physical 
sphere can provide, only in supereminent degree. The 
part which the Holy Spirit took in this central event of 


154 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


all history does not deduct aught from the familiar 
claims for the resurrection, but it turns our attention to 
more spiritual issues. 

The rising of our Lord, auth not even a prophet’s 
voice or touch to draw back his spirit from the king- 
dom of the dead, to those who believe it occurred is 
the most stupendous event in history. When its results 
are considered it is seen to be the most momentous of 
events. The mere belief that it took place has high 
importance. But when we find the Spirit of God 
restoring the Lord to life, we discern that there and 
then God afforded the completest and most satisfying 
evidence of his own existence. All other proofs have 
to be pondered and in a manner proved; but if the 
resurrection of Christ by the Spirit of God is accepted, 
there the existence of God is demonstrated, for there 
the glory of his presence is seen. 

God becomes even a tangible reality. That longing 
for an appreciable god which finds expression in idolatry 
is fully met when the reanimation of Christ by the Spirit 
proves that in knowing the Son we know the Father. 
John, the most spiritual of the apostles, opens his first 
Epistle by showing how much he that once lay on Jesus’ 
breast valued the testimony of the senses, and he closes 
this Epistle by declaring that in Jesus Christ we know 
the true God and eternal life (1 John 1:1; 5 : 20). 

But the resurrection, by which God was brought 
within reach of men’s senses, when it was finished in 
the ascension also removed God beyond the profaning 
touch of sense. And so the resurrection saved the 
spirituality of Christian thought from heathenish de- 
basement while supplying to it the invaluable liveliness 


CHRIST AIDED 155 


and certitude of a physical experience. Every advan- 
tage was won, every disadvantage avoided. 

By the embodied revelation of the Most High the 
Spirit has distinctly transformed human ideas about 
God’s highest moral attributes, holiness and love. To 
ancient Israel holiness was aloofness. God was to be 
worshiped only at a distance. The holy mountain, when 
God visited it, must not be touched by man or beast. 
The restrictions that ruled in the temple worship not 
only set up a priestly caste in Israel, but made the 
whole nation a religious aristocracy—the only thor- 
oughly bad aristocracy. But the Hebrew idea of holi- 
ness was repudiated by God himself when the veil of 
the temple was rent in twain. The risen Christ has 
now entered the holiest place and left the curtain wide 
open behind him. The Holy Spirit could not do for 
religious ideas a more revolutionary act than in raising 
Christ. Holiness is now seen to be a moral quality. 
Christ came near, God is near, and holiness is no longer 
aloofness. 

The love of God is similarly transformed. Under 
the ancient dispensation it was a self-recollecting love. 
Like family affection it was narrowed to one’s own and 
was jealous over the constancy of one’s own. The love 
which for Israel’s sake discriminated against the Gen- 
tiles, now that the resurrection of Christ has put an end 
to all ritual distinctions, finds in love for the Gentiles 
the consummation and even the aim of love for Israel. 
The relations of God’s love to his holiness peculiarly 
illustrate its newness. In both dispensations holiness 
required and love desired expiation for sin. But in the 
elder time the sinner must provide the offering; in the 


156 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


new time love provides it for the sinner (Rom. 5 : 8; 
I John 4: 10). 

How the Holy Spirit crowns the work of Christ in 
raising him from the dead remains as yet far too little 
studied. Who has ever penetrated that saying, “I lay 
‘down my life that I may take it again”? (John 10: 
17.) We are assured, but have hardly learned to think 
of it so, that Jesus “rose for our justification” (Rom. 
4 : 25). Paul even goes so far as to say of release 
from condemnation, “It is Christ that died, yea rather, 
that is risen again” (Rom. 8:34). We can feel, if not 
quite comprehend, that if the Spirit of life had allowed 
our Saviour to remain the victim of death the cross 
could have been only a condemnation to sinners who 
inflicted it. 

But if Christ rose we are risen with him (Eph. 2: 6; 
Col. 3:45 a Peterer + 3)) And itis peculiarly, the work 
of the Holy Spirit to make us live, as it made him live. 
We well know that much; what we have not laid hold 
of is how the Spirit’s work is one. Our living is surely 
bound up with his life. 

The life begun in the Spirit of life is consummated 
through the indwelling of the risen Christ. ‘Our life 
is hid: with’-Christ in’ “God.” (Gol? -3 's:-3).. > Christian 
thought cannot go farther than this. The complete- 
ness of such a relation is all that we may hope for. 
«When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall 
we also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4). That 
glorious condition includes a change of “the body of 
our humiliation into likeness to the body of his glory” 
(Phil. 3:21). And it will be because “he that raised up 
Christ from the dead shall quicken our mortal bodies by 


CHRIST AIDED [57 


his Spirit that dwelleth in us” (Rom. 8:11). Wholeness, 
holiness, happiness—these shall be ours when the Spirit 
of God, who is the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8 : 9), gives 
us in full the fruit of what he has wrought through the 
labors, the passion, and the triumph of him who is our 
Teacher, our Redeemer, our Lord, and our Life. 


CHAPTER *x 
CHRIST VINDICATED 


1. Then 
\ \ 7ITH the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ 
the dispensation of ceremonies came to an end ; 
but the dispensation of the Spirit did not at once begin. 
The apostles were to become witnesses for Christ to the 
ends of the earth; but not quite yet. The Master’s own 
instructions were that they must wait until the Holy 
Spirit had given them power (Acts I : 4-8). 


(1) The Need 

Whatever mysterious accession of power over other 
men’s minds might be conferred by the Spirit’s promised 
baptism, such a power was the least of their needs, and 
a present lack of it the slightest of their disqualifica- 
tions. The supreme requirement was some available 
attestation of the claims of Christ. Early in his min- 
istry, when the Jews demanded a sign for his right to 
purge the temple, Jesus had chosen and promised the 
best possible sign, “ Destroy this temple, and in three 
days I will raise it up”’ (John 2:19). No one had ever 
raised himself from the dead. None but the Son of 
God ever could. This sign had now been given. The 
apostles knew that he had risen from the dead, they had 
seen him go back to the skies, they were certain who 
he was. But who else knew what they knew or could 


be convinced by anything which they might say? The 
158 


CHRIST VINDICATED 159 


last thing that the people were aware of about Jesus 
was that he had been put to death at their demand. 
Their accepted and legitimate guides had incited them 
to make the demand, and the Roman authority, under | 
protest, had yielded to it. The populace with the rulers 
had decided against Jesus, and the case was closed. 
How get it reopened? While this state of facts lasted 
there was nothing for the Master’s witnesses to do or 
to say. A rumor was abroad that they had violated his 
sepulchre and attempted a disgusting fraud. It is clear 
that a premature claim would worse than fail; its failure 
would lay a new stumbling-block in the way of faith. 
Humbler pretensions, to be sure, might have won 
adherents. Much could be said for the Lord’s teach- 
ings, virtues, wonderful works. Himself he could not 
save, but all the world knew that others he had saved. 
Some would willingly remember it, some, one may sup- 
pose, of the many he had healed. The Arimathean, 
who had a new tomb for him, and Nicodemus who 
brought spices for his burial, were like others, no doubt, 
who had loved the young Teacher, and now were greatly 
cast down and bewildered by his cruel fate. Sympathy 
with their disappointed hopes might perhaps have quietly 
spread for a while, but to what purpose? The cause 
was lost; grieving could not regain it. Was he a mar- 
tyr? Why, yes; but the Messiah? Clearly, no. A 
prophet? Without question a prophet; but the very 
Son of God? Oh, what profanation so to name him 
now! If, then, there were any to whom he had shown 
himself alive after his passion, let them on no account 
make haste to tell of it. It wasa secret to be hidden in 
the heart for a while, like that which Mary knew of the 


160 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


mysterious beginning. Let them wait for “the promise 
of the Father,” for they shall receive power and be “ bap- 
tized with the Holy Ghost ’’—whatever that may be— 
“not many days hence” (Acts 1 : 3-5). It is not long 
to wait, only ten days more from Ascension Thursday. 


(2) Pentecost 

The great day, the day of harvest, the day of Pente- 
cost, now fully come, was undoubtedly the day from 
which all formal Christian beginnings are to be reck- 
oned. One does not need to overestimate its importance 
in order to see this. Everything was in readiness, but 
nothing could be done. Christ had completed his mis- 
sion; its results were secure; but his work was at a 
stand until a start should be made by the Spirit. It 
was a strange period, a period of complete arrest. Only 
a brief period, but long enough to show that Christianity 
from the outset was dependent on the Spirit of God, 
that the era of Christ is to be thoroughly identified 
with the era of the Holy Ghost. How strange the 
situation! Christ has sat down on his throne, but no 
one can say so. His apostles are to be his witnesses, 
but to what can they testify? They know the facts in 
large part, but who will believe a word they say? Christ 
has left them his work to do, and they cannot take it 
up. They have remained faithful against the world, 
and that has compacted them into a rudimentary church ; 
but the church has yet to learn its function and to order 
its doings with effect. No wonder that extravagant 
claims are sometimes made for the day of Pentecost. 
Historically Pentecost, and not the first Christmas, was 
the beginning of the Christian era. From the birth of 


CHRIST VINDICATED 161 


Christ until the Spirit came all had been formative, 
transitional, fundamental indeed, and indispensable, but 
preparatory. 

Still, if so great claims can be made for Pentecost, it » 
is strictly as a matter of history, that is, as sheer matter 
of fact. This will prove to be claim enough. What 
took place on that day secured a part in history for all 
that had already taken place, and which otherwise would 
have remained: outside the affairs of men. What the 
Holy Spirit then did gave effect to what Christ had 
already done. Indeed, what Christ had done was un- 
done ly his crucifixion; and what his resurrection and 
ascension did for his crucifixion remained manward a 
nullity until at Pentecost the Holy Spirit turned it into 
operative fact. Instead, then, of seeing that great day 
thick-clouded with mystery, instead of crediting occult 
relations between the Spirit and the infant church with 
an inexplicable efficiency, we see above all else a bald, 
matter-of-fact event giving the effect of reality to all 
which had gone before it. Christian history, if one 
pleases church history, began there, then, and thus. 

Now, in claiming for Pentecost first of all a strictly 
historic value, let it be borne in mind that the facts of 
Pentecost were instructive facts. If the general office 
of the Holy Spirit is to minister the truth, here is the 
grand opening of that service. All along we have 
found the Spirit busied with revealing or applying the 
truth ; but we have never witnessed any such revelation 
or any such application of truth as this. Christ said he 
was himself the Truth ; but the Holy Spirit at Pentecost 
revealed Christ. Here first was he fully revealed. 


Every partial revelation which the Master had made of 
2 


162 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


himself seems to have confounded as many followers as 
it enlightened. Above all, the crucifixion, which later 
proved to be the most complete, most amazing and 
transforming revelation of God, was only stupefying to 
those who knew Christ intimately and loved him well. 
Let us not wonder at this. We do not know how long 
they were in finding out that the cross was more than 
an outrage. Perhaps Paul was the first to see this, 
as he was certainly foremost in teaching it. The par- 
tial self-revelations of Jesus operated as occultations. 
For many minds they hid more than they showed. 
But the ultimate and complete revelation of Christ by 
the Spirit carried all before it. So much came to light 
that everything else could be believed. It began so, 
and so continues. Christ disappears when belittled, he 
is visible to all the world when magnified. 


a. The Attestation 

The revelation of that day began where revelation 
was most important ; to wit, with vindicating the claims 
of Jesus. He stood condemned, he must be justified. 
He had been executed as a sinner, it must be shown 
that the sin was in executing him. And his righteous- 
ness is not all that must be brought to light. Men 
must be made to see who and what he is. It ought to 
be easy for us to recognize that, whatever else Pente- 
cost accomplished, this was far and away what it most 
needed to effect. Everything turned on this. And 
now if we will look at the story of Pentecost in the 
Acts we will find that it is taken up with just this, the 
vindication of Christ’s person, character, and claims. 
When the gift of the Spirit was referred to in advance, 


CHRIST VINDICATED 163 


it was often spoken of as a gift to believers. It was to 
be their baptism. It was to confer power on them. 
But when the day of Pentecost was fully come this view 
of the matter was utterly lost in another. The Spirit’s: 
descent was now regarded as a promise which Christ him- 
self had received from the Father (Acts 2 : 33). 

Note what Peter said about it. The disciples, speak- 
ing with tongues, were not, as he explained, frenzied 
with wine at that early hour in the day. They were 
prophets all, as Joel had predicted they should be. And 
this was why: Jesus of Nazareth, after he had been 
divinely attested by wonders and signs, as they very 
well knew, God had deliberately turned over to the 
people. And their wicked hands had seized and slain 
him. But God would not leave it so. He had raised 
Jesus from the dead. Of this all his followers here 
present were witnesses. Further, God had taken his 
Son to his own right hand. And now he sends the 
Spirit to prove all this. ‘The very Jesus whom you 
crucified,” said Peter, “‘God has made both Lord and 
Christ. (Acts 2771436). 

The Spirit’s testimony was irresistible. The charge 
against the populace was overwhelming. They repented, 
and were baptized for remission of sins—all told about 
three thousand souls. The resurrection guaranteed the 
divinity of Christ ; the Spirit of Pentecost now published 
the resurrection. No completer evidence can be im- 
agined, no other kind of evidence could be so fit. 


b. The Alternative 


Still, many a Christian man has half wished that the 
risen Christ had shown himself to the world. How 


164 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_ irresistible would have been the testimony of worldly 
people who could not deny the evidence of their senses ! 
In this case we might actually have what now is only 
pretended, an official report by Pilate of both the cruci- 
fixion and the resurrection. Might not even melan- 
choly and savage Tiberius, in his imperial retreat at 
Capri, have been impressed, and his dissolute people 
have yielded to testimony so multitudinous and com- 
pelling? It would seem as though what some expect 
from the second coming of Christ must have come 
to pass at his going, and the history of mankind have 
been a redoubled millennium to this day. If only Christ 
had but shown himself to the world alive after his 
crucifixion ! 

But the very results to be looked for would have 
proved how unwise it was for the risen Christ to expose 
himself to the eyes of all men. The new creation could 
not come in that way. The new birth of souls is not 
to be achieved by eyesight. A well managed exhibition 
of himself might have won for the Lord Jesus a king- 
dom of this world; but he would have none of it. It 
would have been the very kingdom which Satan had 
offered. Christ must reign in people’s hearts. His 
rule could be effected only by the Holy Spirit, and on 
men one by one. 

Furthermore, it is by no means certain that the full- | 
est ocular evidence would have persuaded his enemies. 
It proved to be enough for Thomas, who had said that 
he would require the evidence of touch also; but as to 
the adversaries of Jesus, up to the eve of his betrayal, 
it was written that, “though he had done so many 
miracles before them, yet they believed not on him.” 


CHRIST VINDICATED 165 


And so strange did this seem to the evangelist that 
he could account for it only as a blindness of eye and a 
hardness of heart with which God himself had afflicted 
the people (John 12: 37-40). In the parable of Dives 
and Lazarus Jesus said that those who would not “hear 
Moses and the prophets, would not be persuaded, though 
one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31). We should 
not forget how it was when that other Lazarus rose. 
No one could deny that he had been dead and was alive. 
Many flocked to Bethany to see him (John 12:9); but 
the council was embittered, and more than ever bent on 
destroying Jesus (John 11 : 46-53). 

We are not left to conjecture. What effect did the 
Lord’s resurrection actually produce on those who were 
set against him? They knew that he had risen. For 
this fact they had pagan witnesses, witnesses unbiassed 
enough. Roman soldiers reported the resurrection of 
Christ to the chief priests ; but did the priests yield the 
case? Did they accept the evidence that heaven was 
on the side of Jesus? We know to what lengths des- 
peration led them. They were not only ready to deny 
the fact, but bribed the soldiers to give out a false re- 
port. And this report was kept alive among the Jews 
to the not so early date when Matthew’s narrative was 
written. Probably Saul of Tarsus heard that the Ko- 
man guard fell asleep, and that the disciples of Jesus 
ventured to rifle his tomb. And he was the hotter 
against them for such an atrocity. 

If that tomb had not been empty, beyond dispute 
empty, there could have been no question of a resur- 
rection, and there would have been no Christian church. 
The fraudulent pretense of fraud long ago died out; 


166 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_ but skepticism has since then invented every imaginable 
way of accounting for the empty tomb. All these eva- 
sions are alike futile. Each in turn was invented be- 
cause free thinkers saw the futility of its predecessors. 
But obdurate enemies will on no account admit. that 
Jesus rose. They cannot now, and could not then, be 
the source of faith to the doubtful. If an enemy like 
Saul of Tarsus was convinced by seeing the Lord, he 
ceased to be an enemy, and every such case would 
count only as Saul’s does. In brief, if some had been 
convinced, others would have caviled; and the direct 
testimony to the future would have been exactly what 
it is, that of Christ’s disciples. 


c. The Culmination 

But testimony enough to prove the resurrection would 
not be enough to establish the claims made for Christ. 
If he had resumed his body only to begin another 
career on earth, he could not be the Son of God, the 
Saviour of men, or the first fruits of them that slept. 
He must return to heaven. The resurrection needed 
to be completed in the ascension. The forty days be- 
tween these events were transitional, and seem to have 
covered a suspended process. This period was needed 
to make the disciples sure that their Lord had risen. It 
was needed also to lead the disciples’ thoughts from 
what had been toward what was to be. But the most 
important function of the forty days was to satisfy the 
disciples that he with whom they had walked for three 
years was the very one who was about to goin a hu- 
man body to his seat at the right hand of God. 

Those who saw the Lord carried up into heaven 


CHRIST VINDICATED 167 


would be satisfied; but how satisfy anyone else? It is 
not easy to imagine conditions which would justify ac- 
cepting the unsupported testimony of the immediate 
followers of Jesus. An event supernatural as the as- 
cension must be supernaturally corroborated. By so 
much as it is important to know that Jesus was all that 
we believe he was, by so much is it important not to 
believe in any false Christ. One can hardly think 
Paul’s denunciation too severe of “another gospel which 
is not another ” (Gal. 1: 6-9). The support which the 
Holy Spirit gave to the testimony of the disciples was 
suitable and convincing. It was proved that they were 
prophets of God. What they said came as a warranted 
message from the skies. No merely physical miracle, 
wrought in the name of Jesus, and such miracles after- 
ward were not wanting, could at the outset take the 
place of the enduement of one hundred twenty disciples 
with the Holy Spirit. 


(8) After Pentecost 

It seems that the witness of the Spirit at Pentecost 
was as convincing as it was suitable. Whether a little 
while later men were supernaturally qualified to speak 
in unknown tongues which were actually in use by alien 
‘races, is a question of interpretation with which we need 
not here be concerned; but it is plain enough that the 
testimony of the Holy Spirit to the enthronement of 
Christ, testimony which was first given on the day of 
Pentecost, was from time to time in some form repeated 
throughout the apostolic period. When the council at- 
tempted by threats to put a stop to the apostles’ testi- 
mony, the whole company of the disciples prayed that 


168 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


_ they might be encouraged and helped by signs from 
heaven; and again the place was shaken, they were all 
once more filled with the Spirit, so that “with great 
power the apostles gave witness of the resurrection of 
the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4: 1-33). If Peter was to pass 
along the good news to Gentile Cornelius, while he was 
telling how Christ rose and was exalted the Holy Spirit 
fell on all that heard the word (Acts 10: 34-45). Or, 
if emulation and even envy on account of spiritual gifts 
appeared among the Christians in Corinth, it had by 
this time become plain to Paul at least that, while the 
astonishing gift of tongues was for a sign to unbelievers 
(1 Cor. 14 : 22), the intelligible gift of prophecy was still 
more impressive to “one that believeth not, or one un- 
learned.” But now that prophetic gift included other 
teaching than the facts as to Christ; for it discovered 
the heart’s secrets, and so enforced a confession that 
God is among the Christians of a truth (ver. 24, 25). 

Through the variety of charisms bestowed by the 
Holy Spirit upon believers in Corinth we approach the 
permanent offices of the Spirit, and must ask what the 
Spirit has done and still does for the vindication of the 
claims of Jesus during the ages since Pentecost. 


2. Now 
(1) By Miracle ? 

The testimony of the Holy Spirit to our Lord through. 
out the apostolic period took a form which was needed 
at the first. But the vindication of Jesus did not re- 
quire a perpetuation of that testimony. It really pro- 
hibited such testimony. Miracles were indispensable 
in the outset, but would have been detrimental ever 


CHRIST VINDICATED 169 


after. Support for the claims of Christ should corre- 
spond to the nature of his mission. Would miracles 
have met that requirement? If so, what kind of mira- 
cles? We must not forget that a miracle is an event 
in the physical sphere. What physical event, even the 
most benign, could imaginably establish a spiritual relig- 
ion? So far from this, the more kindly the miracle, 
the more despiritualizing and mischievous in the long 
run. It is clear that mere wonders would have made 
Christianity a gazing-stock, and that by and by even 
wonders would grow stale. If the miracles were ap- 
parently useful, if they healed diseases and fed the 
hungry, this could have been continued only at terrible 
cost to society. Carelessness about the laws of health, 
and relaxation of industry would have had consequences 
in the one case disgusting, in the other demoralizing. 
Indeed no religion was ever offered to men so ruinous 
to decency and virtue as Christianity would be if it could 
be counted on to provide miraculous cures for wasted 
health, or unearned bread and fish for idlers. 


(2) Life 

But what testimony to Christ could now be so fitting, 
so conclusive, as a continued manifestation of the 
«Spirit of Christ which is in us”? What other testi- 
mony could have any value if “the fruits of the Spirit”’ 
were wanting. Again I say, the real testimony to any. 
religion must be germane to the nature of that religion. 
What could so correspond to the nature of Christianity, 
what so attest its source in God, as the known achieve- 
ment of its proper objects. A spiritual religion must 
have spiritual evidences. Its basis in historical facts 


170 THE ‘HOLY SPIRIT 


_ must indeed have an historical attestation. 77s Chris- 
tianity has in the historical proofs of the resurrection. 
But even these proofs would but produce bewilderment 
in any reasonable mind if the Christ did not accomplish 
the objects for which he rose. Our religion must show 
what it is by what it does. It is the Christian life 
which shows that Christ lives. All living Christians 
say for him what all the apostles said to the council, 
““We are his witnesses; and so is the Holy Ghost, 
whom God hath given to them that obey him” (Acts 
5:32). ‘Him hath God exalted” is their cry (ver. 31). 
The Christian life proves only an exalted Christ. It 
goes for nothing as proof of a merely human Christ. 
Such a Christ could not do all, such a Christ is not tes- 
tified to by all that Christ has done for Christians. 

The present hour in particular needs and receives 
a vindication of Christ by the Holy Spirit. Such are 
the mental habit and the spiritual mood of our times 
that no marvel except a marvel in the spiritual sphere 
can gain serious attention. All claims for the scientific 
observation and estimate of occult phenomena, believed 
in though these phenomena are by hosts of good people, 
are regarded by almost all the leaders in modern knowl- 
edge with impatience and disdain, as the efforts of quacks 
and cheats after honor and emoluments. The Christian 
miracles are not scouted only because they are not 
looked upon as an integral part of Christianity, but as 
the innocent delusions of the first Christian age, re- 
corded in books sacred in a way, but without authority. 
Destructive criticism of those sacred books is accepted 
as matter of course. But meanwhile, what is beyond 
comprehension of ordinary believers, the figure of Christ 


CHRIST VINDICATED 174 


looms large to these moderns, and his place as the spir- 
itual leader of our race is more and more acknowledged. 
Christianity is seen to have a beneficent place in cur- 
rent history. How account for this place unless Chris~ 
tianity is true? The achievements of the faith, past 
and present, cannot be overlooked. Christ at least is a 
standing miracle. The more we now claim for him the 
more we find that he does for us. The less we claim 
the less he can do, and the less we can prove. A lofty 
faith produces lofty living, and lofty living justifies lofty 
faith. Thus the illuminating Spirit to-day of all days 
vindicates Christ. 

Over against this fact is the startling consideration 
that an evil life on the part of a professed Christian 
distinctly disparages Christ. Every sin by a believer 
testifies faintly or loudly that Jesus is not the Son of 
God, has not risen from the dead, does not sit at the 
right hand of the Father, does not intercede for us, 
does not help us. There is no avoiding this hostile and 
hateful testimony by the sins of Christians. No won- 
der the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews says that 
he who “sins wilfully after he has received the knowl- 
edge of the truth, treads under foot the Son of God, 
and counts the blood of the covenant wherewith he was 
sanctified an unholy thing, and does despite unto the 
Spirit of grace” (10 : 26-29; cf. 6: 4-6). How could 
any other effect follow? What else could disprove the 
claims of Jesus except his own failure in the person of 
his own followers? No wonder Jesus said, “ He tkat 
hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that 
loveth me” (John 14:21). No wonder Paul would not 
have us think of any other possibility than obedience, 


172 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


. “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but 
alive unto God”’ (Rom. 6: 11). 

But the thoroughly aroused author of the warning to 
Hebrew Christians adds at once, “ We are persuaded 
better things of you”’ (6:9). And what if the time of 
supreme trial should come again? Is it not certain that 
the heroism of the martyr ages would be found in be- 
lievers of this “ materialized age”? Would not many 
who live delicately and try to find life amusing, when 
put to the test “endure hardness as good soldiers of 
Jesus Christ’? Might not some who are gentle as 
Timothy prove to be sturdy as Paul? And would not 
the great mass of those who accuse their own lives of 
repeating the offense of Peter’s lips and denying the 
Master be able also to say with Peter, “ Lord, thou 
knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee’? As 
the case stands, then, the Spirit of God rules the lives 
of his children sufficiently to teach our generation more 
persuasively than any earlier generation has ever been 
taught, that Jesus “is the Christ, the Son of the living 
God.” And it is plain that the time can never come 
when the great lesson of Pentecost can be learned from 
any other than the Teacher of that day, to wit, from the 
-Holy Spirit of God. That Holy Spirit then, now, and 
unto the end of the age vindicates the claims of Jesus. 


CHAPTER «Xi 
CHRIST INTERPRETED 


F the promises that the Holy Spirit would teach 
€) the disciples two are exceptionally important. 
«The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will 
send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and 
bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have 
said unto you” (John 14 : 26). ‘ When he, the Spirit 
of truth is come, he will guide you into all the truth... 
and he will show you things to come”’ (John 16: 13). 
Question at once arises as to the scope of the teaching 
and as to the persons to be taught. Let us ask what 
answer was intended for that day and for ours. 


Linen 
(1) The Teaching 

Truth of the past was promised: the Holy Spirit 
should bring to mind what Jesus had said ; also truth of 
the future: the Spirit would foretell things to come. 
If the first of these promises may perhaps cover only 
such an awakening of memory as spiritual enlighten- 
ment and appreciation of relations would be able to 
provide, at least the second promise can scarcely be 
understood merely of foresight by the same means. It 
is undeniable that insight into realities—and truth is 
only a correct statement of realities—freshens the recol- 
lection of past events and sayings which are associated 
in idea. Almost as certainly insight into the present 

173 


174 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


affords a wide-minded recognition of the many possi- 
bilities of the future or even a sagacious anticipation of 
the turn which affairs will take. Is, then, all that Jesus 
promised something by way of enlightened reminis- 
cence and forecast? Could so limited a teaching be 
regarded as the all-inclusive function of the Spirit of 
truth? Or, useful as this might be to us, was it all 
that the promised Guide would do for the earliest Chris- 
tians? For them, and through them for us? If this 
were all, would it be quite true that the Messenger was 
to take of the things that Christ had received from the 
Father, to take of all that the Father had, and show 
them unto the disciples? (John 16: 14, 15.) 

Is insight through spiritual mindedness all there is 
of revelation? ‘He shall glorify me,” said Christ. 
Of Christ’s glory more must become known than his 
followers could gather from anything they had as yet 
been told by him, or from anything which they would 
ever guess about the future. ‘I have many things to 
say to you, but ye cannot bear them now.” Therefore 
the Holy Spirit will by and by say them for Christ. 
“ He will guide you into all the truth” (John 16: 12, 
13). It is evident that, in order to know how much 
Jesus included in his promise that the Spirit would 
quicken their memories and reveal future days, we must 
consider how much he meant by those widest terms, 
‘all things” and “all the truth.” 


a. Limits 

In the Bible, as in common speech, words expressive 
of unlimited extent must often be limited in application. 
Time, space, and number all rest under this liability. 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 175 


It is illustrated in prose as well as in poetry, in doc- 
trine and precept alike, by the Old Testament not more 
than by the New, above all in the language of the most 
important teachers, Jesus, John, and Paul. This de- 
serves illustration. David sang, “The king . . . asked 
life of thee, and thou gavest him length of days forever 
and ever” (Ps. 21:4). The appendix to Mark tells us 
that, after the Lord’s ascension, his apostles “went 
forth and preached everywhere” (Mark 16:20). Earlier 
in Mark we read that there went out to hear John the 
Baptist ‘ a// Judea and a// the inhabitants of Jerusalem”’ 
(1:5). Matthew, after making for convenience a forced 
grouping of the ancestors of Joseph, by omitting names 
which the Old Testament record furnishes, does not 
hesitate to say, ‘So then a// the generations from Abra- 
ham to David are fourteen generations ; and from David 
to the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen genera- 
tions”; and then adds a statement which we cannot 
test, but hardly credit, that from the captivity to Christ 
were just fourteen generations more (I : 17). 

Our Lord’s own precepts and promises are so ad- 
mirable because they do not attempt literalness. _ Who 
ought to obey without limit, “Give to him that asketh 
thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not 
thou away’’? (Matt. 5:42.) But who could state ex- 
actly what was meant without ruining the precept ? 
Unless, indeed, it was intended only for Hebrews in the 
case of Hebrews, as originally prescribed in Deuter- 
onomy (15: 1-11). How robust must the faith be 
which accepts in full the pledge, “If ye ask anything in 
my name I will do it” (John 14:14). How robust, not 
to.say how unthinking, the faith which sees no limit in 


176 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


the mtent of the pledge because none is in the words, 
after one has asked again and again nvain! Take the 
sayings of an apostle, and who is there but a restora- 
tionist that does not feel a little constriction of the 
throat when he mgests Paul's compact assurance, “ As 
in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive ” ? 
(1 Cor. 15:22.) How cruel is John to the devout per- 
fectionist in declaring without hint of mental reserva- 
tion, “If we say we have nosm.... the truth is not 
in us * (1 John 1 : 8); and how much harder is he pres- 
ently on every Christian except the perfectionist, when 
he plumply announces, “‘ Whoever has been begotten of 
God does not commit sin . . . and he cannot sin because 
he has been begotten of God” (3 : 9). 

Of all these passages there is not one which can be 
accepted without some degree of delimitation; nor is 
there one which would not be spoiled by introducing the 
delimitation among its terms. We must recognize the 
Bible’s way. It is the way especially of the greatest 
among writers of Scripture, if we may so speak, of the 
noblest messages from God to man, to make sweeping 
statements, expecting that men will be swift enough to 
mark all due metes and bounds, and slow enough to 
catch at the intended encouragement and uplift. 

This lesson of reserve we must apply to the promise 
of guidance by the Holy Spirit into all the truth. It 
has been disastrously neglected by Romanism on the 
one hand, and by fanaticism on the other. The context 
too must be allowed to interpret the promise. In the 
familiar translation of the most comprehensive promise 
there is a needless infelicity, and even inaccuracy (John 
16:13} Jesus did not pledge the Holy Spirit to guide 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 177 


into “all truth,” but into “all ¢Zetruth.” That is, into 
all the truth about himself, so far, at least, as this truth 
is germane to those relations between himself and them 
which he had in view. A witness in our courts of 
justice is not sworn to tell “all truth,” nor allowed to 
but to tell “the truth.” This means truth about what- 
ever is at issue. There is no reason why this proper 
and universal signification in terms should not apply to 
the Master’s promise. There is every reason why we 
should not do either him or the Spirit of truth the in- 
justice of finding in the promise a scope which no one 
who heard it would think of, and which these very terms 
would not mean on other lips, 


b. Teachings of Jesus 

Those, then, to whom the promise was given were to 
receive from the Holy Spirit an interpretation of the 
mission of Christ ; his mission was largely one of teach- 
ing, and the Spirit was to interpret his teachings. The 
Spirit would recall them for this purpose (John 14 : 26). 
How much more largely to their minds than to ours 
Christ figured as a teacher all four evangelists make 
plain. It is most in evidence with the two who most 
fully reported Christ. No one can forget how he closed 
the Sermon on the Mount, in the versions of both Mat- 
thew and Luke. To hear and to obey his teaching 
summed up all. The deep-seeing John steadily presses 
the fact that the words of Jesus are spirit and life (6: 
63). It even amounts to life eternal to know God and 
Christ (17: 3). If he still had much to say which they 
could not yet bear (16:12); if at best he told in ad- 


vance of what would come to him and to them, in order 
N 


178 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


that afterward they might believe in him, and not be 
taken by surprise at their own trials (13:19; 15:20; 
16:4); this is why the Comforter would testify of him. 
In so testifying he would fit them also to bear witness 


(U5 20;327). 


Can any one fancy that to interpret Christ was a nar- 
rowing office for the Spirit? At least Christ himself 
gave no ground for sucha fancy. All that the Father 
had was his. Therefore he said the Spirit should take 
of his and show it unto them (John 16:15). No one 
could come to the Father but by him (John 14:6). It 
was because, as he had just said, he was himself the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life. To know him was to know the 
Father; and for the future they did indeed know the 
Father; had even seen him (John 14:7). This could 
hardly seem true, and Philip promptly said so. To Philip 
the one satisfying benefaction would be a vision of God. 
He could not believe he had already enjoyed that incon- 
ceivable gift. This was because he had not really 
known his Lord. The Lord himself seemed surprised 
to be so ill known. ‘Have I been so long time with 
you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?” For 
Christ’s intimate consciousness of identity, to see him 
was actually to see the Father: “ And how sayest thou, 
shew us the Father?” (Ver.9.) This was John’s own 
persistent view. As above noted (p. 154) God put him- 
self within reach of men’s senses when Christ came 
(1 John 1 : 1-3; 5: 20). Paul too will have it that in 
Christ they found at home “the fulness of the God- 
head bodily” (Col. 2:9). 

It was a compendious but a comprehensive knowledge 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 179 


of God which might be attained in knowing Christ. 
What was that knowledge? All that the Father had 
belonged to Christ. What was that all? We call to 
mind the similar assurance of Paul in phrases as nota- 
bly glowing as those of Jesus are notably calm. « All 
things are yours,” he wrote to those poor-souled Corin- 
thians who would claim just what could be got from 
Paul, or Apollos, or maybe Cephas, or who looked to 
Christ as merely the head of their clique. «Paul, 
Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, the present, the 
future, all are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is 
God's” (1 Cor. 3 : 21-23). 

If it were an interpretation of Paul that we wanted, 
it would be hard to find any limit which he was think- 
ing of. God may claim Christ, and Christ us; but 
Christ’s possession in us gives us a possession in him, 
in all that he has, and in all God has. Kinsfolk and 
friends belong to each other. So do Christ and dis- 
ciples. Christ meant to share with his people those 
riches which he had laid aside in order to enrich the 
poor. Paul would have it that heaven and earth, what 
is and what is to be, and all God’s foremost servants are 
at the service of all God’s people, living or dying. The 
meaning is plain enough. The sorrowful reproach to 
the Corinthians is effective only by lifting those parti- 
sans into loyalty and largeness, only by opening to the 
eyes of the starvelings a vision of the feast. 

Did Christ mean to offer any less? I think so. It 
is true that all the Father’s possessions were at his dis- 
posal, and into that treasure the Comforter was freely to 
thrust a hand for largess to the near followers of Christ. 
But the limitation which may be found in Christ’s view 


180 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


at this point is the very striking introduction here of 
ministering the truth. ‘“ He shall receive of mine and 
shall sow z¢ unto you”’ (16:14). And this designation 
of the process as a showing or teaching Jesus tied by a 
“therefore” to the vast claim which immediately pre- 
cedes: “All things that the Father hath are mine.” 

Again we ask, was the office of giving Christ a nar- 
rowing office for the Holy Spirit? Or was it narrow- 
ing to give us Christ only through interpreting God by 
him, and him by his mission? What adequacy had the 
truth as it is in Jesus to fulfill the unbounded promise 
of the Holy Spirit's office? 

As we try to enter into the minds of the first be- 
lievers this question is embarrassing to those of us who 
cannot accept our Master’s averment, an averment far 
beyond any current conception of the matter, that it is 
“life eternal to know the only true God, and God’s mes- 
senger Jesus as the Christ” (John 17:3). But all that 
Christianity then began achieving was through the in- 
strumentality of that knowledge. The qualities of God 
himself were soon so differently apprehended that God 
was virtually to them a different Being. It is not un- 
likely that every quality which enlightened Christians 
learned to attribute to him would have been mentioned, 
would certainly have been assented to, by pre-Christian 
Jews. Yet God was hardly the same God to Pharisees 
and to Christians. The view of him embodied in Jesus 
and expounded by the Spirit of truth was not the view 
which men had carried about with them before Christ. 
And that which men are in the habit of thinking about 
God is all he is to them. What idea does the name of 
Deity suggest? Is he an Eye which never turns away? 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 18I 


Is he Love, and nothing more? Or is he only august 
Holiness? Let it be noted that the prevailing view of 
God is not the same, say, in a Puritan generation and in 
ours. No, nor is it the same to the same Christian in 
successive periods of his life. The Holy Spirit hardly 
had a more momentous office than to transform the 
regnant conception of God, to interpret Christ, and God 
by Christ. The understanding of the Son of Man had, 
either by adequacy or deficiency, to stand for what God 
is. This view of God was one of “the things of Christ,” 
and this thing of Christ the Holy Spirit took and showed 
unto the disciples. 

Christ was himself the choicest gift of God. The 
Spirit offered Christ to faith, How astounding this 
revelation was when the Holy Spirit for the first time 
distinctly made it, the story of Pentecost amply testifies. 
It could never become commonplace to those with whom 
the knowledge of Christ was not, as it is with us, a 
birthright. Even now well instructed persons some- 
times lay hold of the idea of Christ with astonishment. 
That idea perhaps invariably, surely with few exceptions, 
is now associated with the idea of his mission. It must 
have been so then, for all the apostolic preaching of which 
there is record was a proclamation of Christ crucified, or 
risen, of Christ effecting a vital something, and offering 
what he had effected, or was still carrying into effect. He 
had come on a mission, and for the sake of his mission. 
It is fitting that by his mission he should be judged. 


c. Redemption by Christ 
And so the Holy Spirit in interpreting Christ made 
known the mission of Christ. There was pressing need 


182 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


that he should. Only the Spirit of God could succeed 
in that task. Apparently the Jewish mind had to un- 
learn much that Jehovah had long been at pains to 
teach, and which it had but painfully learned. We 
know, for one thing, the revulsion of sound Jewish 
hearts against human sacrifices. “ The pleasant valley 
Hinnom” was Tophet now, 


And black Gehenna call’d, the type of hell. 


Their fathers in the bad old times had there offered 
their children in a now abominated sacrifice to Moloch; 
and not far away their own evil hands but newly made of 
the Son of Man what was said to be an acceptable offer- 
ing unto God. Could Jews be brought to believe it? At 
first some, but in the end not many. Judaism prepared 
for Christianity, but prepared also for its rejection. 

Yet meanwhile the propitiatory sacrifice had been 
vindicated. There was even a marked preparation for 
it on the part of those who were closest to Jesus. We 
know that they would not endure, even from his own 
lips, the monstrous requirement of his death. No 
statement of its purpose and importance shook their 
conviction that it must not be. They had so different 
ideas as to his mission. They loved him and honored 
him so greatly. They believed in him too highly to be- 
lieve what he said. But the Holy Spirit was to recall, 
when all was over, what Jesus had taught; and Jesus 
himself was once more to rehearse for the Spirit’s in- 
terpreting what the prophets had foretold, how that 
“Christ ought to have suffered and to enter into his 
glory’ (Luke 24:26). The resurrection may have put 
a new face on the matter; it was certain to transform 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 183 


their views. It made them think so much more highly 
of their Lord than they ever had, that ere long they 
could be persuaded by the Holy Spirit to accord the 
highest value not only to what he had done, but above ~ 
all to what he had borne. Thus the cross became the 
paradoxical symbol of his triumph. Paul uttered the 
sentiment of Christian hearts about it with precision as 
well as ardor in his ‘God forbid that I should glory 
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 


If the Holy Spirit could make the disciples under- 
stand the adequacy of the cross as a sacrifice for sins, 
it could more readily teach its power to destroy sin. 
How naturally Paul passed from glorying in the cross of 
Christ to his next words, “by whom the world is cruci- 
fied unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6 : 14). 

Sometimes the provision for pardon has been taken 
for immunity in sinning. Propitiation has threatened 
to become immoral. It was an early suggestion, “‘ May 
we not continue in sin that grace may abound”? But 
Paul saw at once that this would defeat the mission of 
Christ. How seek pardon for sin, and remain given 
over to it? ‘How shall we that are dead to sin live 
any longer therein”? (Rom. 6:1, 2.) To be relieved 
of sin’s penalties is to be rid of its power, because the 
power of sin is one of its penalties. It is of all penal- 
ties the worst, except the reaction of a holy God against 
sin. God could not pardon, that is, relieve from the 
claims of a broken law, and leave us breaking the law. 
Still less could he forgive, that is, himself accept sin- 
ners as though they had not sinned, while abandoning 
them to a life of sin. Sin is death ; we cannot live in it. 


184 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


d. Life in Christ 

And so the Spirit uncovers to view another surpass- 
ing fruit of Christ’s mission ; he not only delivers from 
penalties and from sin, he becomes himself our life. 
This truth belongs to the maturest period of New 
Testament thought. Brief as was the age which pro- 
duced the New Testament, the steadiness and speed 
with which its doctrine unfolded is not its least ex- 
traordinary feature, especially when contrasted with the 
centuries afterward required to win full recognition 
one by one for its most important doctrines. Life in 
Christ is pre-eminently the teaching of John. “He 
that hath the Son hath life” (1 John 5 : Toye 46 God 
hath given us eternal life, and this life is in his 
Son (ver. 11). John, however, never surpasses, I think 
never equals Paul in compact and powerful statement 
of the whole case. There are no other words like 
these: “I have been crucified with Christ; and I no 
longer live, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2:20). But 
Paul attains such comprehensiveness and force only by 
breaking away with characteristic boldness from all 
literalness. No literally true expression could approach 
this figurative expression in truthfulness. But it is an 
astounding figure. ‘My very soul,” said he, “is slain, 
my personality destroyed, and only Christ now is where 
Paul was.” The Spirit of God wrought effectually upon 
that mighty spirit, gave him utterance, and made Paul 
the interpreter of Christ to all the ages. 


In noting that the Holy Spirit sets forth Christ as 
the source of spiritual life, we need not decide either 
for or against a mystical theory of life in Christ. But 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 185 


it should not be overlooked that the Holy Spirit has 
left on record certain teachings which show what seem 
to be counter views to be not in all respects mutually 
exclusive. For example, it will not be denied that the 
New Testament ascribes to Christ the life of men 
(John 1 : 4) and the support of all things. “In him 
allethine’s ‘consist’” (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1: 3). -~Iihathen, 
the conservation of the universe is his act, is it extrav- 
agant to surmise that the scriptural expressions to abide 
in him, for him to abide in us (John 15 : 4), to have our 
life hid with Christ in God, to call Christ himself our 
life (Cols3 : 3, 4), really do recognize in him the source 
and support of the process which we call Christian 
living, do own him as the fountain of the spiritual en- 
ergy which it is natural and seemly to talk of as “vital,” 
and all without regarding it as any addition to the sub- 
stance of the soul, which is itself the seat and synonym 
of life? For him to keep all things in existence is not 
to add to their materials; why should it be an addition 
to the spirit for him to keep spirituality alive ? 

On the other hand, when Paul writes “to me to live 
is Christ” (Phil. 1 : 21), the meaning is not deepened 
by making the saying metaphysical. Such an interpre- 
‘tation breaks with the context. The meaning is really 
heightened when it is understood to be that the heart 
of Paul was so filled and his mind so absorbed with 
thoughts of Christ that Christ was all he cared for, all 
he busied himself with, all that life meant to him. To 
be with Christ would make dying gain, and yet to re- 
main in the flesh would be to win the fruit of his 
labors. To goto Christ would be far better for him ; to 
remain with the Philippians would be better for them. 


186 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Therefore he knew that he was to stay and keep on 
with his work. In either case he would be living for 
Christ ; and so to Paul a life “bound up in Christ,” as 
we say of a mother and her child, was a very plain and 
practical, not an occult or metaphysical thing. 


e. Universality of Christ 

It was through Paul mainly, although through Peter 
first, that the Holy Spirit revealed the sufficiency of 
Christ for the Gentiles. It was through Peter first, 
not first through Jesus himself. If one of us Gentiles, 
well persuaded that we are the people, and that the 
commonwealth of Israel is alien, seeks on the lips of 
Jesus some show of authority for this popular senti- 
ment, something more serious than the unexpected will 
happen. He will find such a sentiment not only with- 
out warrant, but also rebuked and condemned. It is 
true that Jesus reminded the people in Nazareth how 
Elijah provided through the years of famine for a 
woman of Sidon only, and how Elisha, though there 
were many lepers in Israel, cleansed none “saving 
Naaman, the Syrian” (Luke 4: 25, 26); but these acts 
did not make Elijah and Elisha prophets of the Gen- 
tiles, and were cited by Jesus only as rebukes to his 
own townsfolk. It is true that once he journeyed across 
the borders and released from a demon the daughter of 
a Syro-phoenician woman, but he began with harshly re- 
minding her that the children’s bread was not for her, 
and yielded to her wit what he might perhaps have 
withheld from her entreaty (Mark 7 : 24-29). When 
he sent out his apostles in pairs he forbade them to go 
into “the way of the Gentiles, or into any city of the 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 187 


Samaritans. .. Go rather,” said he, “to the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel” (Matt. 10: 5,6). It is true that he 
himself sat down at Jacob’s well to talk with a Samaritan 
woman, and gave two days to teaching the open-minded | 
men of Sychar. It is true he told the woman that 
neither Gerizim nor Jerusalem was the place to worship 
God; but this was because no place is God’s abode. He 
who is Spirit must be worshiped in spirit. Jesus could 
say no less. How much less does any one think he could 
have said? It is also true that before the last Passover 
certain proselytes, Greek in race, asked leave through 
Philip to speak with Jesus. How novel this request 
was, how uncertain its reception would be, is hinted by 
the fact that Philip felt he must first consult Andrew, 
and both carry the unprecedented message to Jesus. 
And what did Jesus? We do not know that he granted 
the request; we are not told that he rejected it. But 
it started such reflections and such utterances that the 
Father himself replied from heaven. And what had 
Jesus said that required a response from the skies? 
Had it any reference to the request of those Greeks? 
It may have been, no doubt was, in some way prompted 
by the fact of such a request ; but, as on the mount of 
Transfiguration, what he spoke of was “his decease 
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem.” This it was 
which evoked the loud acknowledgment of the Fa- 
ther there and here (Luke 9 : 31-35; John 12: 20-30). 
«This voice came,” said he, ‘for your sakes,”’ and then 
he added that, “if he be lifted up from the earth he 
would draw all men unto him.” I think he meant that 
all classes of men, Gentiles as well as Jews, how much 
more surely Gentiles! would feel the persuasive power 


188 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


of the crucified. On this saying at least we may rest 
as an assurance, though it was not an unequivocal affir- 
mation, that the Saviour intended to redeem men unto 
God “out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, 
and nation.” 

Still it was but scanty avowal which Jesus made of 
universality in his mission. More exclusively than 
perhaps any other feature of the gospel, this was a 
revelation by the Holy Spirit. It was the Spirit that 
notified both Peter and Cornelius of what otherwise 
Cornelius would not have claimed nor Peter accorded. 
It was the descent of the Spirit where these representa- 
tives of Jew and Gentile met, which satisfied the apostle 
of the Jews, and was afterward appealed to in order to 
persuade others, that the gospel was meant for the un- 
circumcised (Acts 10 and 11). That Saul’s mission was 
to the Gentiles was a special revelation to good Ananias, 
who should tell Saul what he must do (Acts 9 : 6, 15). 
While the great apostle lived he gloried in his special 
“knowledge in the mystery of Christ, in other ages not 
known, but now revealed by the Spirit, that the Gentiles 
should be partakers of his promise in Christ by the gos- 
pel” (Eph. 3 : 3-6). For us everything has turned on 
such an interpretation by the Holy Spirit of Christ and 
of his mission. Mark it, ye who cry, “Back to Christ.” 

It was, to be sure, an interpretation easy in itself to 
justify. Since Christ had fulfilled all types none re- 
mained which a Jew must observe or which it would 
harm a Gentile to omit. What Christ had done was, 
then, for the one as much as for the other. What truth 
Christ embodied no ceremonial restricted to a people 
ceremonially prepared. God was the God of all, and all 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 189 


truth about God was truth for all. Justification could 
not be by law, could be by Christ, evidently was for all 
who would accept Christ. In Christ alone was spiritual 
life; nothing apart from Christ could give life, but » 
nothing excluded from life in Christ. This is plain 
enough to-day, and was all well argued by Paul and 
Pauline men; but to Jewish Christians nothing less 
than the persuasions of the Spirit could vindicate God’s 
own liberty to show grace to the uncircumcised. 


(2) The Taught 

The promise of the Master was that the Holy Spirit 
should be a guide into all Christian truth. To whom 
was this promise given? What the answer to this 
question is is not all one to high church and low church. 
Such difference as they see in the answer is enough to 
make the difference in their churchmanship. Yet it is 
doubtful whether those very marked diversities of doc- 
trine as to the church spring originally from different 
views of the church’s teaching function. It is rather 
a disagreement about the nature of the church that 
causes the disagreement about the church’s authority, 
or one about ordinances and officers which begets the 
discord as to the nature of the church. It does not fall 
to us to go back to what in point of fact is the begin- 
ning, but to consider what, independently of opinions 
about the church, should not be a particularly trouble- 
some problem in exegesis. 


a. Apostles 


We ought to agree that a promise may be claimed 
only by those to whom it is given, unless evidence can 


190 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


be brought that others are intended ; that is, that other 
persons are constructively among the persons into whose 
hands the promise passed. None but apostles were 
present to hear this promise. ‘Those eleven intimate 
associates and selected witnesses of Christ could beyond 
all question claim the guidance of the Holy Spirit into 
all the truth. Was their enjoyment of this guidance 
ex officio? Must one have been an original apostle in 
order to claim it? Or need one be a successor in office 
to an apostle? Could an assemblage of all the apostles, 
or an ecumenical council of all bishops, or some chief 
apostle singly, or his successor, show that the force of 
the promise was limited to them or him ? 

Absence of all but the eleven does not strike us as 
limiting the Eucharist to the eleven. Plainly the Lord’s 
Supper was for all. Those times so understood it, and 
the utility of the observance has fixed that understand- 
ing in the hearts as in the habits of succeeding cen- 
turies. Directions and warnings with regard to the 
communion of course supply a distinctly scriptural au- 
thority for a custom which after all has its real sup- 
port in its value to all. We can see that it was impor- 
tant to extend the use and privilege of the communion 
to more than those in whose presence it was instituted ; 
was it important to regard the promise of plenary euid- 
ance into truth, a promise given to the same persons on 
the same occasion, as extending beyond the apostles? 
Any one who doubts it has with him the vast majority 
of Christians. Low churchmen and high agree that the 
apostles could and did claim an authority as teachers for 
which no one else was fitted by the Holy Spirit. But 
even this prevailing opinion is to be qualified. 


CHRIST INTERPRETED IQI 


b. Prophets 

A prophet spoke for God. When an apostle taught 
with authority, his authority, apart from his face to face 
knowledge of Jesus and the resurrection, so far as it 
was due to instruction by the Holy Spirit was the 
authority of a prophet. And there were many proph- 
ets. On Pentecost all who spoke with tongues were 
prophets. The two gifts are not represented as at first 
distinct. At Antioch “there were in the church cer- 
tain prophets and teachers” besides Barnabas and Saul, 
and to them “the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Bar- 
nabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called 
them” (Acts 13:1, 2). Prophets undertook also to 
regulate Paul’s own proceedings, to stop him on his last 
journey toward Jerusalem (Acts 21 : 4, 10-1 2), whither 
he felt “bound in the Spirit” to go (Acts 20 : 22, 23). 


ce. The Church 

We note that unqualified assent was not given to all 
which a real prophet might say. In the Corinthian 
church, when two or three prophets spoke, some other 
person must judge; precisely as, if any one would 
speak with tongues, he might only when some one was 
at hand to interpret (1 Cor. 14 : 27,29). Prophets in 
plenty there might be, but it was not prophets alone 
whom the Spirit endued with discernment. In some 
things a plain man may bear comparison with a genius. 
Paul prayed that Ephesian Christians one and all might 
receive from the God of our Lord Jesus Christ “the 
Spirit of wisdom and revelation in full knowledge of 
him” (Eph. 1:17). When it became a question whether 
Paul had extended unlawful liberty to the Gentiles, and 


192 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


he thought it would be well to secure for his course an 
indorsement from the mother church in Jerusalem, it 
was the church and not merely the apostles and elders 
who heard the case discussed, and then announced 
what “seemed good to the Holy Ghost” (Acts 15 : 28). 
Always if there were abuses to correct or false beliefs 
to uproot, Paul argued the matter, as a modern preacher 
would to a modern congregation. Evidently he took 
for granted that no claim to intimate and exclusive 
knowledge which he might set up and confirm by won- 
ders and signs would convince his disciples. Like a 
modern missionary, whose superior acquaintance with 
Christianity is conceded, something remained for him 
to do if he would persuade not only heathen that Chris- 
tianity is true but converts that his doctrine was true 
Christianity. His “speech and preaching was in dem- 
onstration of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:4), a demonstra- 
tion of which his hearers must judge. He disclaimed 
«dominion over their faith” (2 Cor. I : 24). 

The Holy Spirit taught the entire church, chiefly 
through apostles, but taught every believer, especially 
every faithful believer. “We speak wisdom,” wrote 
Paul, “to the perfect,” that is, to the mature. Only 
“he that is spiritual judgeth all things”; but a spiritual 
man may claim to “have the mind of Christ,” and so to 
“know the mind of the Lord” (1 Cor. 2 : 6, 16). 

But no readiness in Paul to consult other apostles, to 
concede that insight into truth is possible to all believ- 
ers, affects in the least his insistence on the independ- 
ence and fullness of his own revelations, the depth and 
adequacy of his own knowledge. His terrific denun- 
ciation of any that pervert the gospel as he had preached 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 193 


it, is well known. He could not restrain his indigna- 
tion. It found voice in almost his first words to the 
Galatians. His own teaching he certified to be “by 
revelation of Jesus Christ’’ (Gal. 1: 6-12). Little as 
he wished to lord it over the faith of Corinthians, he 
was ready to give them “a proof of Christ speaking in 
him” if they would have it (2 Cor. 13: 3). His very 
disclaimer of authority to impose celibacy on virgins, 
or to forbid the marriage of widows (1 Cor. 7 : 25, 40), 
shows that without the disclaimer he would have been 
understood to speak authoritatively. 


As to the persons in that age who were contemplated 
by the promise of the Holy Spirit’s guidance into 
knowledge of divine things, we conclude that apostles 
were purposed beneficiaries in the highest degree; that 
prophets received the same guidance to a degree which 
cannot be exactly determined ; and that, as to compre- 
hension of truth, which is real possession of it, apostles, 
prophets, and laity were helped on the same terms. To 
be spiritually minded was to secure illumination and 
insight, and to “walk not after the flesh but after the 
Spirit’ was to be spiritually minded. 

A gift which we may share with an apostle, and which 
he could share on no other terms than are offered to us,. 
might seem more of a distinction for us than for him. 
Yet illumination of known truth is of the last impor- 
tance. To see into a truth is to be prepared to see out 
from it, to discern its relations and applications, to ap- 
prehend, in a word, its real worth. A truth understood 
holds up alight for all our seeing. This is doctrinal 


wisdom, and it outdoes doctrinal knowledge. Stout 
O 


194 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Peter, when Paul took him to task for inconsistency, 
may have been the foremost apostle of the twelve, but 
I doubt if he were not too “dull of comprehension” to 
be thoroughly aware that his course amounted to what 
Paul roundly denounced as disstmulation (Gal 2 : 11- 
18). How sterling an estimate of what the gospel in- 
volves Paul gave when he closed his account of this 
painful affair by saying, “I do not frustrate the grace 
of God; for if righteousness come by the law, then 
Christ died for naught”’ (ver. 21). Paul had the cour- 
age of his convictions; and this moral quality gave 
clarity, breadth, and fixity to conviction ; while much to 
the degree that Peter wanted moral courage, his under- 
standing was clouded. It is not to be supposed that he 
deliberately carried away Barnabas with what Paul calls 
“his dissembling,” but it is clear that even an apostle 
could secure clairvoyant appreciation of truth only on 
the same terms as other Christians. 


2. Now 

The interpretation of Christ in our day is determined 
by three agencies—tradition, exegesis, and Christian 
consciousness. The church is not here mentioned as a 
fourth, because it is not a distinct agent. It would be if it 
had a voice which all recognized as official and authorita- 
tive. But as only the aggregate of Christian men, organ- 
ized or unorganized, it is the church that rehearses the 
tradition, interprets the Bible, and is at once the subject 
and the voice of Christian consciousness. These three 
determinative agencies then must be considered in order 
to a proper estimate of the Holy Spirit as the inter- 
preter of Christ to our generation. 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 195 


It is only less important to-day than nineteen cen- 
turies ago that the Holy Spirit should perform this 
office. If less important now, this is because before the | 
apostolic age came to a close an ample account of our 
Lord’s career, mission, enthronement, and present rela- 
tions to men was set down in black and white, once for 
all. No doubt an extreme risk is accepted for any un- 
folding system of ideas when it is embodied in set terms 
which may be weighed, which have been chosen by au- 
thorized persons, and which are submitted to all men. 

Definitive statement is not, however, a disadvantage 
to truth. It is a safeguard against misconception and 
misrepresentation, the best safeguard. When the Book 
has passed unscathed through the fires of criticism, 
through fires lit afresh in every generation, but never 
able to destroy the sacred oracles, then they are at- 
tested, as a man’s contention at law is attested after 
it has been adjudicated by every court which could 
be resorted to, and in every court has won a decision 
in its favor. 

But the ancient gift of the sacred Scriptures leaves 
much for the Holy Spirit still to do by way of instruct- 
ing the long procession of generations. Mankind is 
largely under the control of tradition; the Scriptures 
themselves need to be interpreted, and Christian expe- 
rience is continually brought within the purview of 
Christian consciousness with all its irresistible per- 
suasiveness and its formidable prepossessions. 


(1) Tradition 
Tradition is in ill favor with Protestant Christians. 
The Master denounced it. And as the tradition of the 


196 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


elders made void the law, so it seems to us that the 
tradition of Roman Catholicism has made void the 
gospel. Neither scribes nor Romanists meant any such 
mischief. Their traditions were intended in the one 
case as “a fence”’ to the law, to save the unwary from 
breaking its requirements, or, in the other case as an 
enrichment of the gospel. Pharisees held that Moses 
left with Joshua and Caleb much instruction which was 
not included in the books of Moses, and there is nothing 
improbable in this belief. Romanists hold that Paul 
told Timothy and Titus a deal which was not mentioned 
in his Epistles, as is likely enough, since each Epistle 
was for a special and limited purpose. But the tradi- 
tions about what Paul or Moses said have undone much 
which each of them wrote. 

Yet tradition is not without its uses. Some of these 
are recognized in the New Testament. Paul enjoined 
the Thessalonians, “ Hold the traditions which you have 
been taught, whether by word or our epistle,” and « With- 
draw yourselves from every brother that walketh .. . not 
after the tradition which he received of us” (2 Thess. 2 : 
15; 3:6). There are some things which tradition can 
do. Tradition is a statement passed along by generation 
to generation. Ordinarily it goes from mouth to ear, but 
may be transmitted by writing, such as letters or other 
documents which are prepared not as permanent records 
but as casual means of communication. 

Tradition is chronic rumor. If an occurrence is of 
importance enough to get talked about, the rumor is 
good evidence within limits that the occurrence has 
taken place. If the occurrence is of such moment that 
it cannot be forgotten, the report of it is perpetuated, 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 197 


the rumor becomes a tradition. A few years ago a 
rumor was abroad in the land that there was war with 
Spain. Did any one doubt the rumor? It was said 
that unprecedented naval victories were won by our 
fleets in the tropical waters of both hemispheres. We 
were astounded, but we all believed at the time that the 
report was true. Those of us who so believed were in 
extremely few cases at hand to see for ourselves. We 
credited the reports which had got into the newspapers, 
or were talked over between persons. The rumor of 
that war persists. It is growing chronic. It bids fair 
to become a tradition. Already a tradition has grown 
out of the rumor of a civil war forty years ago, includ- 
ing the notable personages Lincoln and Lee, neither of 
whom many of us ever saw, but who, as tradition says 
and we on the strength of it believe, in their time cut 
the great figure still talked of. There is an inveterate 
tradition of a still earlier war, with its George ITI. 
and its George Washington, of both of whom tra- 
dition gave us the first credible account. It was not 
histories that made their names familiar in our youth. 
Presumably it was not history that first told us of Na- 
poleon and Cromwell, and Julius Czesar and Alexander, 
and Mohammed and Christ. 

Tradition may be trusted to keep such names alive, 
and always with the names some notion of the persons. 
The notion about the person is the perpetuator of his 
name. Tradition gives us valid assurance that Jesus 
lived, that he had great power over his followers, was 
regarded by them as their Redeemer and Lord. And 
the tradition is constant. It is not a shifting tale. 
What it had to say concerning Jesus in the last genera- 


198 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


tion we feel quite clear about, for it was clearly taught 
us by our parents. They in turn trusted their own 
teachers, and from them and their teachers came the 
same story in receding series back to the age that knew 
Jesus.. That the tradition has been uniform may be 
easily ascertained from the record made of it in each 
generation until we reach the first, and of what the re- 
port then was, in which the Christian tradition began, 
the New Testament is the record. From the outset it 
has never changed. 

Tradition cannot be trusted to do more than preserve 
substantially correct reports of a sufficiently great person 
or event. These reports it cannot let die and cannot 
easily falsify. But an elaborated set of abstractions, a 
scheme of religious doctrines or of minute precepts, tra- 
dition 1s quite certain to derange or even undo. It will 
surely persist in passing them on. It does so now and 
for us. It was not from the Bible that we found out 
what we know of Christian truth, nor from any other 
source than tradition. Parental instruction, Sunday- 
school teaching, to some lesser extent friendly indoc- 
trination and counsel are the sources of our religious 
beliefs, and these are the customary forms of tradition. 
Preaching is the authorized voice of tradition. The 
sermon is its deliberate perpetuation. How momentous 
that the Holy Spirit keep the tradition pure! That it has 
done so for substance of doctrine we may feel assured, 
unless there is reason to believe that the earliest re- 
corded as well as the latest uttered tradition, and all the 
voices that intervene through these nineteen Christian 
centuries have united to mistake the nature of Christ 
and of his mission to men. 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 199 


At bottom the question as to the worth of Christian 
tradition is a question concerning the teaching function 
of the church. It is claimed that the church is a 
“fountain of authority’’ concerning Christian truth, 
and authority of the church is just as stoutly repudiated 
as claimed. At least one important factor may be can- 
celled out of this problem. We need not consider 
merely what the Holy Spirit enables the church to 
know and declare. The church may be regarded for 
the moment as purely human. We need not try even 
to distinguish the true from the false church, or the 
church at large from local churches. Meaning by the 
Christian church only that aggregate of associated men 
who nominally accept the religion of Christ, we may ask 
whether such an association has not the capability 
which belongs to every other human organization many 
generations old of knowing what it is for and what it 
agrees to believe? Does not the fraternity of Free 
Masons know something about why it exists? Could it 
not tell its secret if it would? Is there, or was there 
ever an enduring society that could not? Is it, then, 
credible that the Christian church cannot be appealed 
to for perfectly trustworthy information as to what 
Christianity is? If there are any points on which the 
‘church’s tradition is unchanging, and we have seen that 
there are, these points are infallibly a part of the 
genuine Christian doctrine, or else that doctrine has 
always been mistaken by all Christians. How much 
this position is strengthened by the certainty that the 
Holy Spirit has dwelt in the hearts of true Christians 
will be more appropriately considered under the head of 
‘Christian Consciousness” ; but what has already been 


200 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


said concerning the insight which spiritually minded 
men enjoy should make it clear to us how such men, 
instructed by the Spirit, have been able to interpret 
Christ truly to other Christians, and how by the power 
and persuasiveness of their insight they have kept alive 
a tradition sound in the main, though in details impos- 
sible to maintain in purity. 


(2) Exegesis 

The Roman Church has not been at fault in insisting 
on the importance of an infallible interpretation of the 
Book. Protestants have often been mistaken in so 
jealously guarding “the right of private judgment” as 
to overlook the importance of right judgment. Let us 
insist that the Bible is infallible; yet its infallibility goes 
for nothing unless we infallibly know what the Bible 
means. It is the possibility of error at some point 
which leaves the truth uncertain. If the Bible is falli- 
ble we do not certainly know the truth of God; but 
we do not certainly know the truth if our interpreta- 
tion is fallible. Infallibility of interpretation is prac- 
tically as important as infallibility of the Book. 

There are four possibilities: we may have a fallible 
interpretation of a fallible book, or an infallible inter- 
pretation of a fallible book ; a fallible interpretation of 
an infallible book, or an infallible interpretation of an 
infallible book. In point of fact, we have all four. 
Great reverence has grown up in this country for the 
_ Constitution of the United States. We have learned 
to regard it with some of the awe which in other lands 
contemplates the divinity that “doth hedge a king.” 
Yet neither king nor constitution is always wise or 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 201 


right. That venerated instrument is a fallible book. 
And some interpretations of it are fallible. It has 
never been settled, nor ever will be, whether a strict or 
a liberal construction of our organic law is correct. It 
is the fundamental issue between parties, and the 
division is permanent. Courts can neither evade the 
issue nor decide it. But we have also infallible inter- 
pretations of the Constitution. We know infallibly that 
it provides for executive, legislative, and judicial depart- 
ments of the central government. We would not be 
better assured as to this if it were written across the sky. 

Let us say, then, that our Bible is an infallible book, 
and we disagree perhaps all the more tenaciously about 
its teaching on many points. So long as the disagree- 
ment continues it cannot be infallibly known which 
interpretation is correct. But we also have infallible 
interpretations of the infallible Book. We know abso- 
lutely that it represents God as personal and all-per- 
fect; Jesus Christ as in some sense divine and in some 
way Saviour; the Holy Spirit as transformer and guide; 
faith, either directly in Christ or mediately through the 
church, as the condition of all the benefits offered by 
the gospel; and the future as seriously affected by the 
present. That these things are infallibly known to be 
the teaching of the Bible would not be better certified 
if the voice of God proclaimed it from heaven in the 
hearing of all men. Our infallibility is not due to the 
authority of ecclesiastics, nor to the conclusiveness of 
arguments. It is due to the impossibility of under- 
standing the Bible otherwise. The right of private 
judgment becomes the authoritative voice of a universal 
consensus. 


202 THE-HOLY SPIRIT 


This consensus will be found to cover precisely the 
points which are steadily affirmed by tradition. And 
they are the essential points. Surely it ought to be so. 
If tradition fastens on the name, the characteristics, 
and the mission of Jesus Christ, it is because those 
characteristics and that mission are what make his 
name memorable. Now what else than this is it that 
the New Testament also ought to make plain about 
him? The tradition is uniform in support of precisely 
that which exegesis always finds in the Bible. If it 
were otherwise, then the Bible, which was given for the 
guidance of man, would be the most preposterous book 
ever written; for it would be a book which left the 
essentials of Christianity so uncertain that no one could 
find out from it what they are, and all who tried to 
would be contradicting each other. 

It can hardly have escaped notice that the uniform- 
ity claimed for tradition and biblical exegesis concern- 
ing the fundamentals of faith is not here ascribed to 
the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. On the contrary, it 
has been studiously and scrupulously insisted on that 
Christ was too impressive and the Book too intelligible 
to leave human understanding at fault in the main. 
But the Spirit no doubt has helped to protect our in- 
herited conceptions from being impaired by preference 
for any unchristian tradition, or for an alien exegesis. 
The congruity of Christian ideas is largely their protec- 
tion, a congruity as much felt as seen. The office of 
the Spirit as the interpreter of Christ is thus most evi- 
dent in connection with the teaching of Christian ex- 
perience, which is the real issue when question arises 
_ about the authority of Christian consciousness, 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 203 


(3) Christian Consciousness 

This is a means of interpreting Christ as to which a 
sweeping assertion hazards all, while disparagement, on 
the other hand, makes out the inner life of a believer 
to be a delusion. Schleiermacher’s too exclusive claim 
for Christian consciousness was after all the most per- 
manently vital and vitalizing element of his doctrine, 
or of any one’s doctrine in the nineteenth century. It 
affords to Ritschl’s scheme whatever worth there is in 
its “judgment of worth,” and is the one positive, con- 
structive, priceless contribution to present-day thought 
by that powerful critic and theologian. Let us begin by 
allowing ourselves to hope that we may find the testi- 
mony of Christian consciousness entirely defensible in 
nature, intelligible in utterance, and definable in scope. 
Such a hope is well worth proposing to ourselves in 
face of the contention by alarmed conservatives that 
no one can tell whose Christian consciousness is to be 
consulted, that it has no plain word to speak, and that 
nothing whatever in the way of Christian doctrine has 
been ascertainably agreed to by the consciousness of 
all Christians, throughout the whole course of the Chris- 
tian centuries. 

What is meant by the term must first be made plain. 
Meanings could be assigned which would expose the 
testimony of this witness to depressing doubt, even to 
entire rejection. But what is consciousness, except 
being aware that one thinks, feels, decides, acts, in a 
word, has an experience? What is Christian conscious- 
ness except being aware that one has a Christian ex- 
perience? What is a Christian experience except our 
dealing with facts which Christianity appeals to or pro- 


204 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


duces? That is, what the Bible declares for truth we 
experience as fact, and to call this Christian conscious- 
ness is merely a somewhat formal way of saying that we 
are awake to the situation. The evidence of conscious- 
ness, then, resolves into the evidence of experience. 

It is evident that the Holy Spirit’s office is indispen- 
sable to Christian consciousness. It is the Holy Spirit 
that lights up or even produces the fact of Christian 
experience. The testimony of Scripture to this effect 
is explicit and copious, and what Scripture alleges about 
the Holy Spirit’s office, experience confirms. It would 
not answer to say that we perceive the Holy Spirit at 
work in us; but we discern his works in us. These are 
as certainly reaffirmed by experience as they are affirmed 
by Scripture. Have we conviction of sin? It is the 
office of the Holy Spirit to “convict the world of sin” 
(John 16:8). Have we been delivered from sin? 
“The requirement of the law is fulfilled in us who walk 
not after the flesh but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8 : 4). 
Is the new living due to new life? “The spirit of life 
in Christ Jesus set me free from the law of sin and 
death” (Rom. 8: 2). Can we feel sure that we are 
born of God? “The Spirit itself testifies with our 
spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8 : 16); and 
‘in this we know that he abides in us, from the Spirit 
which he gave us”’ (1 John 3: 24). Have we an in- 
ward assurance that Jesus is the Son of God? Does 
God in some unaccountable, almost weird and wholly 
masterful way convince us, and hold all the Christian 
centuries to the conviction, that the One we own as 
Lord may rightly be worshiped as divine? “There are 
three that testify, the Spirit, and the water, and the 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 205 


blood. . . This is the testimony of God, that he has 
testified concerning his Son. He that believes on the 
Son has the testimony in himself,” namely, “the testi- 
mony which God has testified concerning his Son. And 
this is the testimony, that God gave to us eternal life, 
and this life is in his Son” (1 John 5: 7-11). What is 
all this but John’s reminiscence of the Master’s own 
words, “ He will glorify me”? (John 16: 14.) 

Without attempting to cross the wide field of Chris- 
tian experience all the way in any direction, what has 
already been noticed reveals two classes of Christian 
truths, those which can be directly experienced, and 
others which can be indirectly proved from experience. 
Thus it is quite under our observation that we were 
alien from God and that now we areas his children ; 
but it could not be the direct teaching of experience that 
there is life for us after death, that Jesus Christ ages 
ago rose from the dead, that he is now at the right 
hand of God, that he intercedes for us, that God is 
triune, that he is infinite in all excellences, or even that 
he exists. None the less Christian consciousness indi- 
rectly testifies to all these transcendent realities. It 
does this by the effects in us which may be ascribed to 
them, or by the effect in us of denying them. For ex- 
ample, the entire series of moral and spiritual changes 
that Christianity produces corresponds to the highest 
claims for Christ, and is produced no otherwise; while 
the denial, let us say, of the existence or perfections of 
the Deity affronts conscience, heart, and even zesthetic 
sensibility. When Clifford openly confessed that “the 
loss of theistic belief is a very painful loss” . .. that 
he had “seen the spring sun shine out of an empty 


206 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


heaven to light up a soulless earth,’ and had “felt with 
utter loneliness that the Great Companion is dead”’;! 
or when the sons of Korah sang “ My heart and my 
flesh crieth out for the living God”’ (Ps. 84: 2), the 
atheistical professor and the devout psalmist were alike 
citing us to a proof for the existence of God, little as 
the ancient singer suspected it and expressly as the 
modern scholar denied it. A true thought of God thus 
met the requirements of a criterion within us, and this 
sort of occurrence is the experience through which the 
fact of God’s existence becomes certified. 

Our higher powers are a manifold standard of the 
good and true in corresponding spheres. The matter 
stands thus: All the psychical powers of a rational 
being can exercise themselves upon God. It is their 
only full and satisfying employment. Without this em- 
ployment our rational faculties experience yearnings 
and strivings which prove at once the dignity of man’s 
nature, the largeness of his requirements, and his ina- 
bility to provide for them. If a proposed doctrine in 
religion fails to satisfy these yearnings, so much the 
worse for that doctrine. It has been tested and found 
wanting. It has been tested by the chemistry of ex- 
perience and has not stood the test. The test may be 
a bad one, or a good test ill applied. The discredited 
doctrine may in point of fact be true, but it cannot 
seem true. Or if it passes all experimental tests, it 
cannot seem false. It may for all this be a false doc- 
trine. As in the opposite case the test may be a bad 
one, or a good one ill applied, but the doctrine that 
seems so to fit us cannot but seem true and desirable. 


1 «Lectures and Essays,” p. 389. 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 207 


A doctrine about God which collides with reason, or 
which affronts the conscience or makes the Most High 
appear unworthy of worship or of love, may possibly be a 
true doctrine; and yet a blunder in the soul’s chemism, 
a blunder made in the laboratory of the soul’s experience 
renders it impossible to concede to that truth its rights. 
And the converse equally holds. How indispensable 
that Christian experience be controlled by the Holy 
Spirit! Like a blind man tapping his way through the 
streets with a stick, Christian experience follows its own 
guidance always, but the Spirit must make it expert. 
It is exceedingly interesting and not a little useful, to 
test by the standard within us doctrines which seem 
remote from experimental knowledge. A spiritually 
minded man may do it well. “He that is spiritual 
judges all things.” “God has revealed these things 
unto us by his Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, 
yea, the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2: 15, 10).. Thus 
by setting truth up to the standard of the soul’s require- 
ments we gain a strong assurance that there is an all- 
perfect and Supreme Being. Christ too may in this 
way figure to our minds as what the New Testament 
would have us think he is. Indeed, the grander the 
figure of him the distincter and more veritable, that is, 
the more emphatic the attestation found within us. By 
such a test the Holy Spirit is credited with our trans- 
formation. Even the eternal life seems assured through 
the operation within us of “the power of the endless 
life.” There is no doctrine of the Christian religion 
which is without its practical bearings. There is none 
which was announced for other reason than its practi- 
cality. And so one and all can be submitted, directly 


208 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


or indirectly, to a trial by experience. It is the case 
even with doctrines which were made known to us only 
through special revelation. 


Two important conclusions may now be reached as 
to the interpretation of Christ by the Spirit through 
Christian consciousness: First, since the standards 
found in our constitution are liable both to be perverted 
by sin and to be misunderstood, their inscriptions, so to 
speak, effaced or defaced or mistakenly deciphered, the 
Christian consciousness is not a trustworthy standard 
for the truth of doctrines which are in dispute. But if, 
on the other hand, its decisions on any point are uni- 
form, Christians could not well imagine that they all 
have always erred as to what is the testimony of their 
experience, or have confided too much in its validity. 
This would be to refuse to self-knowledge the credit 
which, as we have seen, belongs to a consensus in tra- 
dition and in the interpretation of the Bible. Worse 
still would it be to say that those two processes of oral 
transmission and merely intellectual exposition have a 
trustworthiness which must be denied to the operations 
of the Holy Spirit on the soul, for the sake of which 
the Bible was given and the tradition kept alive. On 
points, then, as to which the correct reading of Chris- 
tian experience is disputed, there is every reason for 
rejecting the inerrancy of that reading. But none the 
less Christian consciousness is the standard of our es- 
tablished convictions, and conviction is essential to the 
practical efficacy of a truth. The doctrines fully at- 
tested by experience may be fewer than those that stand 
acknowledged by a Credo; but they are our working 


— 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 209 


beliefs, and the only beliefs of ours which can claim this 
high rank. 

The second conclusion is equally beyond dispute; 
the aid of the Holy Spirit is more important to Christian 
consciousness than anywhere else, if Christ is to be 
correctly interpreted. It is so here and now, just as it 
was formerly in the land of his birth. We are to bear 
in mind that, as the Bible never reveals speculative but 
always practical truth, its doctrines are a statement of 
truth found in the Christian consciousness of the ancient 
writer. That truth was revealed to him of the Spirit, 
comprehended by him through the Spirit, applied to him 
in the Spirit, and published by him under the Spirit’s 
guidance. It is impossible to imagine how barren would 
have been the result if an apostle had not allowed the 
truth to enter into his life, and so enabled him to de- 
clare it as matter of personal knowledge; or, on the 
other hand, how disastrous would be the misinterpre- 
tation of Christ and perversion of Christianity if the 
Holy Spirit did not now inspire the thoughts and direct 
the inner lives and help the utterance of those who 
carry the gospel to mankind. 


Comparative Effects 

In distinguishing the characteristic effects on the 
popular view of Christ which are traceable to tradition, 
to study of the Bible, and to Christian consciousness 
severally, we may light upon results not looked for, and 
which show how progress of doctrine is to be made. 
Which, for example, of these three that frame the gen- 
eral opinion is decidedly the least venturesome, the most 


conservative? Which but distrusted and decried tra- 
P 


210 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


dition? Whicn has been the most fruitful in whimsies 
that delight to break with tradition and take pride in 
announcing themselves as discoveries? Which can this 
be except an unhistorical, unscholarly exegesis of the 
Bible? And what other could it be than the Christian 
consciousness, which through sympathy with the re- 
ligious spirit of the times insists in the name of prog- 
ress on modifying doctrine to suit the times? Of 
course, the Bible is constantly appealed to in support 
of every extreme, almost as constantly as though it were 
the actual fountain of our opinions. 

It is easy to see why tradition is conservative. Its 
only office is to conserve the lessons of the past. It 
tells what it has been told. If it adds anything it does 
not mean to. To change a little the message which it 
carries from one generation to another is merely its in- 
firmity. Any messenger may make the same mistake. 
The telegraph often does it. Conservatism then inheres 
in the very nature of tradition, and is never wittingly 
departed from, unless as sometimes occurs, the message 
is deliberately altered by a generation that receives it. 
And this inherent conservatism where tradition prevails 
is made absolutely rigid by the reluctance and timidity 
of most people to change their religious belief. 

As to the effect of biblical studies we are well aware 
that our sacred Scriptures announce doctrines which 
invite and receive profound investigation. The methods 
of investigation cannot be too carefully chosen, nor 
right methods too strictly followed. The matters to 
be dealt with not only transcend observation by the 
senses, but lie along and pass beyond the boundary of 
exploration by human reason. The Bible is largely a 


CHRIST INTERPRETED 2II 


record of mysteries, that is, of truths made known by 
revelation. But reason may variously test and attest 
the truths which it could in no wise discover. The 
temptation to a superficial student, especially to one 
who truly loves and constantly studies the Bible, is 
two-fold: First, he is tempted to draw inferences where 
the impossibility of comprehending a truth forbids the 
attempt; secondly, from the vastness of its themes, and 
from the wholly practical aims of the Bible it comes 
about that its single statements are incomplete, and for 
theoretical exposition insufficient; but incidental ex- 
pressions are often caught at and made the authority 
for doctrinal fancies quite out of keeping with the posi- 
tions of the scriptural writer quoted, and still more 
incongruous with the main teachings of the Book. It 
is in this way that innumerable fantastic heresies arise, 
odd little sects break away, and the newly invented in- 
congruity is advocated with stubbornness of ignorance 
and exemplariness of zeal so long as the breath of life 
remains in it. 

But, while the liability to such eccentricities is far 
from ended, a veritable science of hermeneutics is help- 
ing to correct this frequent cause of reproach against 
the Protestant liberty of interpretation, and against the 
Bible itself. But correction by transforming the method 
of interpretation must necessarily be slow. Yet, I think, 
no wide extension and inveterate persistence of petty 
errors need be feared ; because there is no human need 
which is met by them. So far Christian experience is 
conservative; only less so than systematic theology, 
which reveals the incompatibility of a fancy with Chris- 
tianity itself, or the history of doctrine, when it shows 


212 TH: HOLY (SEIRIT 


that this supposed new fancy was long ago proposed, 
well weighed, and “ found wanting.” 

Christian consciousness, then, is not to be accused 
of vagaries, fond as it is of progress. It may be said 
to its credit that the Christian sentiment of a genera- 
tion is never captivated by an idle whim. It may be at 
fault, but its fault is not a trivial fault, for it does not 
deal with trivialities. If the Spirit of the Times calls 
for a modification of some notable doctrine, or even, as 
many now insist, for a general reconstruction of the- 
ology, this is invariably due to a need which is widely 
felt. It is Christian experience, experience of the re- 
quirements and the supplies of the inner life, which 
suggests new views, determines what new views can 
gain general attention, and what conclusions have a 
chance to be finally accepted. But it is the office of 
the Holy Spirit to lead us into all the truth by making 
known our needs, and the remedy. Interpreting us to 
ourselves, he can interpret Christ to us. Christian con- 
sciousness thus holds an historic relation to living truth, 
and the Holy Spirit holds a vital relation to Christian 
consciousness. Through conscious experience, and only 
through conscious experience, he fulfills the promise to 
lead us into all truth. In a word, while not the imme- 
diate criterion of truth, Christian consciousness is the 
working measure of the worth of truth. 


CHAP EEK att 
OFFICE TO THE WORLD 


WO widely different views are taken of the Holy 
Spirit’s office to the unbelieving. One opinion 
occasionally found among Calvinists is that the Holy 
Spirit is never granted to the unregenerate, that it isa 
gift to the people of God only. Much the same view 
is presented less harshly in two forms. According to 
one of these the Holy Spirit addresses the ungodly, but 
only as he speaks through Christian lives or language. 
Another opinion defines the process, explaining that 
the Spirit of God is carried to the worldly by the words 
of Scripture, precisely as the spirit of a man may be 
spoken of as imparted by what he says to another. In 
opposition to all these is the teaching with which revi- 
valists have made us familiar, that the Holy Spirit is 
ever calling the unconverted by external appeals from 
the preacher, the Bible, divine providence, and also by 
inward and manifold persuasions. The anti-Calvinist 
theology has carefully elaborated this preacher-view 
into the tenet that, in consequence of Christ’s atoning 
work, the Holy Spirit is given to all men, and by “com- 
mon grace”’ so far corrects the consequences of the fall 
that every man has “gracious ability’’ to accept or 
reject the salvation offered in Christ. 
These opposite extremes of opinion have to face the 
embarrassment that there is no Scripture for either of 


them. It is a fatal want, since the Bible alone is an 
213 


214 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


‘ 


original fountain of information on this subject. How- 
ever extraordinary the transactions occurring in our 
- own breasts, however momentous the changes observed 
in the conduct of other men, it would be fanaticism of 
an audacious type to refer these inner or outer occur- 
rences to the Spirit of God, if we had no warrant of 
Scripture for so doing. No psychological test indicates 
that men are not naturally capable of all these changes 
in feeling and in life. Now there are only two passages 
in the New Testament which declare that the Holy 
Spirit acts on the souls of unbelievers. But there are 
two; and this fact refutes the doctrine in all its forms 
that the Holy Spirit does not visit the unregenerate. 
Yet neither of these two texts in the least intimates 
that the Holy Spirit’s visit to the wicked is a fruit of 
the atonement; and neither states that the Spirit con- 
fers “common grace,” whereby all men are enabled to 
accept or reject the gospel at will. That is, neither 
passage teaches that all men are half-regenerated. 

In considering these two texts addressed to the peo- 
ple of a distant day, it is unnecessary to distinguish 
what the Holy Spirit did then from what he does now. - 
The simpler text is the biting reproach of Stephen 
to the council: ‘Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in 
heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: 
as your fathers, so ye” (Acts 7:51). No wonder, 
hearing this, ‘they were cut to the heart, gnashed on 
him with their teeth,’ and when he added that he “saw 
the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on 
the right hand of God,” cried out, stopped their ears, 
ran upon him with one accord, cast him out of the city, 
and stoned him. That Stephen said being “full of the 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 215 


Holy Spirit,” and this they did resisting the Spirit. It 
is plain that the Spirit addressed itself to them out- 
wardly, perhaps inwardly; but there is no word, nor any - 
sign in them, of a special and gracious ability, Spirit- 
given, to accept the Good News. 

The other text has received many interpretations. 
This passage is the Master’s own prediction of the 
Holy Spirit’s office to the world. ‘When he is come 
he will convict the world in respect of sin, and of 
righteousness, and of judgment. In respect of sin, be- 
cause they believe not in me; and of righteousness be- 
cause I go to the Father, and ye behold me no longer; 
ard of judgment, because the prince of this world has 
been judged” (John 16 : 8-11). 

Some of these terms are characteristic of John, if 
not quite exclusively his; and nearly all are used char- 
acteristically. It is neglect of this fact which has led 
to so many unwarrantable explanations. The clue to 
the entire passage is that the offices for the world here 
ascribed to the Holy Spirit, one and all turn on rela- 
tions of the world, directly or indirectly, to Jesus Christ. 
The fruit of the Spirit’s activity in this relation of Christ 
to the world is that a xew view is to be imparted. The 
convicting will not be of sin, righteousness, and judg- 
ment, but zz respect of these; that is, it will be a con- 
viction, to translate literally and correctly, about sin 
and the rest. This new view will correct a blame- 
worthy error. The world shall be not only convinced 
but convicted.’ Conviction means both a strong per- 
suasion of truth and a lively persuasion of guilt. Both 
meanings are present in this instance. 


1 See valuable discussion in Hare’s ‘‘ Mission of the Comforter,’ note L. 


216 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


1. Conviction of Sin 

“ He shall convict the world of sin.” Conviction of 
sin popularly means conviction of personal sinfulness. 
That meaning is not absent in the present case, but is 
not foremost. There shall be a new conception of sin ; 
and it will be a recognition of the sinfulness of disde- 
leving Christ. We must remember that we are study- 
ing a passage written by John, and it must be looked 
at from John’s point of view. Two benefits provided 
by Christ are exceedingly, even exclusively, prominent 
in the Gospel according to John; namely, light and life. 
Those who undervalue and even deprecate this Gospel 
because it is all alight with the divinity of our Lord, 
ought to value it because it makes so much of his 
teaching. “The words that I speak unto you, are 
spirit and are life” (6:63). He said a great deal more 
than any orthodox trinitarian would venture to say, or 
perhaps can comfortably repeat: “This is life eternal, 
to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom 
thou didst send” (17 : 3). 

John’s view of belief corresponds to his view of 
truth. To Paul belief is trust; to John it is credence. 
Paul’s belief confides in Christ as the Saviour, John’s 
belief accepts Christ as the truth. In this case as in 
all cases a writer must be interpreted by his situation. 
In the case of Paul this is familiar. As a faithful 
Pharisee he had found that he could not be justified by 
works. The law condemned him; as a believing Chris- 
tian he had learned that he could be justified by faith 
in Jesus Christ. It was for Paul the problem of right- 
eousness, forensic and moral. This became his through 
faith, and faith was trust in Christ. 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 217 


John’s point of view is widely different, and hardly 
taken into account. No doubt this is why the orthodox 
so fail to recognize what John means by delzeve, and 
find no place in their distinctively Pauline systems for 
the importance which John sees in truth. John does 
not begin with his religious experience and work out, 
as Paul does, a doctrine of forgiveness on condition of 
faith. John does not start with his personal experience ; 
he does not even assume a human point of view. He 
begins at the beginning; and at the beginning Christ 
is God, is Maker, Preserver, Life, Light. He who is 
all this to all creatures came to his own world, and the 
world would not recognize him. He even became one 
of us men, and men would not receive him. How awful 
the contrast between what Christ was and how he was 
met. To John, looking at what he was and what he 
had become, the thing of sole importance could only be 
to believe Christ. There could be no other work of 
God except to believe him whom God had sent (6: 29). 
To believe Christ will secure all that Christ came for. 
If he lays on men commands, to believe him should 
lead to obedience. If he offers benefits, believing him 
can alone make sure of those benefits. If he is to be 
lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness, nothing will 
come of it to any who do not look because they believe. 
Or, if eternal life is offered, it can be found nowhere 
than in a credible knowing of the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Paul’s trust implies 
credence, and John’s credence leads to trust ; but trust 
is what belief means to Paul, and credence is what it 
means to John. 

From John’s point of view it is possible to under- 


218 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


stand his incessant presentation of Christ as the truth. 
So bent is he on justifying belief in all that Christ was, 
that in Christ John finds God brought within reach of 
the senses. He makes this point in both his Gospel 
and his first Epistle. ‘The Word was made flesh, and 
dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory” (John 1 : 14). 
“Many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of 
his disciples; . . these are written that ye might be- 
lieve that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (20 : 30, 
31). So begins and so ends his Gospel. “That which 
was from the beginning, which we have heard, which 
we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked 
upon, and our hands have handled” (1 John 1:1). “We 
know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us 
an understanding, that we may know the True One, 
and we are in the True One, in his Son Jesus Christ ”’ 
(5 : 20). So begins and so ends his great Epistle. 

Since to believe Christ carries with it all good, dis- 
belief includes all evil. If “he that believes on him is 
not judged,” then “he that believes not has already been 
judged” (3:18). This sharply offsets his assurance 
that “God did not send his Son into the world to con- 
demn the world.” Oh, it was blameworthy not to be- 
lieve. “Ye have even seen me, and do not believe’”’ 
(John 6 : 36). 

If it all seems perilously near making eternal life or 
death a matter of intellection, we have the Master’s 
prompt explanation, that men disbelieved because when 
light came they loved darkness and hated light. And 
they hated light «because their deeds were evil” (3 : 19). 

We should now be prepared to see that Jesus re- 
ferred to no formal maladjustment when he said that the 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 219 


Holy Spirit would “convict in respect of sin, because 
they believe not in me.”’ The Holy Spirit could expose 
no more radical evil. What conscience learns as to sin 
is no special lesson of the Holy Spirit until he makes | 
this point, “It is sin not to believe in Christ.” ‘This 
is the one sin which the gospel itself has to warn us 
against, because it is the one sin which the gospel itself 
makes possible. Men may have in fact as many virtues 
as they have in appearance, yet lack the great and vital 
grace of believing in Christ. It was so then, it is so 
now. And it remains a grievous sin, a sin which they 
grievously need to be convicted of, that they are reject- 
ing the light which shines from God. It may be hard 
to persuade such men that they hate this light, and 
hate it because, for all their virtues, there is something 
evil in their works. They will not believe it unless 
they believe, in Christ.) hen? they will) believe: it: 
What had seemed light within, they now see was dark- 
ness. But no other persuasion than that of the Holy 
Spirit can convince and convict them of the sinfulness 
there is in disbelieving Christ. Abundance of good 
preaching about good morals threatens to revive the 
Pharisaic righteousness and the Pharisaic wickedness. 
It is shutting out the true Light, it is curtaining off 
the real darkness. But the threat of this preaching 
will not be quite fulfilled. The Holy Spirit will never 
give up convicting the world of sin because it believes 
not in Christ. 


2. Conviction of Righteousness 
“He will convict the world in respect of righteous- 
ness, because I go to the Father, and ye no longer be- 


220 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


hold me.” Explanations vary according as they set 
out from the antithesis between the convictions of sin 
and of righteousness; or from the explanation which 
Christ himself gave concerning the conviction of right- 
eousness; or, in a manner, from both. 

If we reason from the antithesis, then, unbelief betes 
the culmination of sin, belief is at least the security for 
righteousness, for “the righteousness of God through 
faith in Jesus Christ” (Rom. 3: 22). This righteous- 
ness can now be ours because, as the argument runs, 
Christ has completed his atoning work, and is seated 
by the Father. Such an explanation is thoroughly like 
Paul, and thoroughly unlike John. It is the doctrine 
of justification by faith, of approved legal standing, that 
is, of acceptance “apart from works of law” (Rom. 3: 
28), even in spite of many violations of law (5 : 16); all 
of which is, as regards obligations to law, merely par- 
don, or remission of sins (4: 7). 

But divine forgiveness is not a gift of God dwelt on 
by John. The only reference to it in his Gospel is the 
authority which Jesus conferred on his apostles when 
he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy 
Spirit. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted to 
them” (20 : 22, 23).! Righteousness, then, is not, ac- 
cording to John, pardon, a release from the claims of 
law; nor does it describe forgiveness, God’s personal 
acceptance of us as though we had not sinned. Right- 
eousness, according to John, is the quality of being 


As John’s first Epistle contains a reference to propitiation (2 72) 
wholly wanting in his Gospel, so does it also twice refer to remission of 
sins (I: 9; 2:12); but the characteristic teaching of both documents 
is the same, in Christ is life. 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 221 


tght;-1f 1s moral, notforensic (cf. 1 John’2:: 293132 7; 
10). This is its meaning also in the other Gospels 
(Matt. 5:6, 20; Luke 1:75). With Jesus the well- 
known doctrine is that righteousness does not consist 
even in absolute conformity of living to law. It must 
reign in the heart (Matt. 5 : 22, 28). Not that the law 
may be blamelessly violated in the smallest particular. 
It was the Pharisees’ way to break some least com- 
mandment, and to teach men so (Matt. 5 : 19, 20), as 
it was their way to be punctilious about some minute, 
non-moral tithing of herbs, and to be reckless of the 
weightier demands of morality (Matt. 23 : 23). Woe to 
them! Christ, with his strict idea of righteousness, 
was not declaring that the Holy Spirit would convict 
men because they lacked a merely legal justification. 
However true Paul’s doctrine about righteousness, it is 
not the doctrine of the Gospels as to that word. This 
saying, then, of our Lord cannot be interpreted merely 
by its contrast with what goes before. Conviction about 
sin is not offset by conviction about remission of sins. 
Is it, then, to be understood from the Master’s own 
explanation of the ground on which the Spirit will con- 
vince of righteousness ?>—“ because I go to the Father, 
and ye behold me no more.” He went in his visible 
body. His resurrection was completed by his ascen- 
sion. Death had no power over him, did not perma- 
nently disgrace him. Hence some infer that the con- 
viction imparted to the world by the Spirit is that the 
accused Christ was righteous. As against this explana- 
tion it has been pertinently suggested that it would have 
required him to say, “The Spirit will convince of my 
righteousness.” It seems then hardly adequate to regard 


222 DHE HOLY SPIRE 


the righteousness about which the world was to have a 
new thought as merely Christ’s innocence of the charges 
on which the world condemned him. The ground on 
which the new conviction would be enforced did not of 
itself alone explain the zature of the conviction. 

A more satisfactory view is reached by allowing the 
contrast between the convictions of sin and righteous- 
ness and the ground on which the contrast rests, to 
explain each other. Thus we reach the conclusion that 
the new thought about righteousness must, like the 
new thought about sin, have its relation to Christ, and 
must also be justified by his ascension to the Father. 
This is the thought so new then, so old now: Christ 
7s the zdeal of righteousness. The world gathers from 
the ascended Christ a conviction of righteousness which 
the Holy Spirit will not let it lose. It is not a con- 
formity to law but a fruit and exposition of life. If it 
were merely legal the utmost to be said would be, 
“Blessed are they that keep his testimonies”’ (Ps. 
119 : 2); while the most in the way of legal righteous- 
ness that many Christians could feel sure of would be, 
« Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose 
sin is covered”’ (Ps. 32: 1). As to true righteousness 
the fit word of Jesus was, “Blessed are the pure in 
heart, for they shall see God”’ (Matt. 5 : 8). 

If Christian people hardly boast of a blessedness so 
transcendent, the world, all the same, has learned from 
the Holy Spirit himself that only the pure in heart see 
God, or ought to, or wish to. Now that he has ved 
the righteousness which the Spirit commends, when he 
went back to take his place beside the Father Christ 
became like a new orb in our heavens, brighter and 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 2a 


steadier than any that has shined there, a star which 
never pales by day, because in the presence of its 
brightness the deep heavens are dark and the very sun 
shines by reflected light. Christ is the Light of the 
world. If the world does not praise his people it praises 
him. The ancient Pharisee would not accept our Lord, 
and now the world for all its censoriousness, is begin- 
ning to perceive who the modern Pharisee is. It is surely 
not one who stands afar off and beats upon his breast. 
It is the one who, lifting his eyes unto heaven, thanks 
God that he is not as other men or even as these church- 
members. Does that man go down to his house justi- 
fied? Does not the Spirit of God intimate the possibil- 
ity of a righteousness different from his, and of a sin 
which is quite his own? The righteousness, then, of 
which the world is convicted by the Holy Spirit, is the 
ideal righteousness of Jesus Christ. 


3. Conviction of Judgment 

Every truth to which the Holy Spirit is to testify is 
a “truth as it is in Jesus.” Every conviction which he 
is to impress upon the world is a conviction suitable to 
the world’s relations with Christ. The conviction that 
judgment has been given against the Prince of this 
world supplements the convictions as to sin and as to 
righteousness. The conviction that disbelieving Christ 
is the culmination of sin, issues in conviction that the 
Prince of this world is judged, judged with the stern 
judgment due to a false judge; for he falsely con- 
demned the Christ. The conviction that Christ is the 
ideal and type of righteousness is also a judgment 
against the Prince of this world; for he continually se- 


224 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


cures a worldly minded decision that there is no need 
to be righteous as Christ is righteous, and as often finds 
the conscience of Christendom reversing the wicked 
judgment and condemning him who procured it. Again 
and again Satan has had his way against Christ, only to 
find himself condemned by the sound judgment which 
the Holy Spirit inspires in the consciences of men who 
know about Christ. 


There need be no question as to what the conviction of 
judgment primarily referred to. It was then the “hour 
and power of darkness.” The spirit of the hour had 
abruptly changed. For fear of the people the rulers 
had forborne to touch the Lord. Now the people were 
about to clamor for his crucifixion. But their hour 
(Luke 22 : 53) was his hour too. Again and again it is 
written that he knew his hour had come (John 13:1; 
17:1). It was the hour when the Prince of the world 
would make sure of condemning the Christ, and make 
sure of being himself condemned. 

One cannot say that it was altogether a false move. 
The spirit of all malice got himself condemned, but he 
got also many an enemy of Christ condemned. He 
could not wreck the mission of the Son of Man, but he 
could ruin many men. The same judgment is con- 
stantly risked by him for the sake of the same result. 
He cannot thwart the Christ ; he can only make sure of 
Christ’s success. He cannot. check the beginning of 
the new dispensation ; he can help to institute that be- 
ginning. He cannot even prevent founding the society 
of those who believe in Jesus, but he can destroy his 
own followers who will not believe in Jesus. 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 225 


And this is what he is perpetually doing. Every age 
seems at the time an age of unbelief. Always one sees 
a new chance that faith may perish from the earth. 


This threat makes the church tremble. It terrified the - 


first companions of Jesus. Unbelief seemed about to 
prevail. Judgment by every court and every crowd was 
against Jesus. The shepherd was smitten and the sheep 
were scattered. Since then the terror has never been 
so extreme, Even those who knew the personal Jesus 
and loved him as their intimate Teacher and absolute 
Lord, were less brave and less faithful than those 
blessed ones since that day who have not seen and yet 
have believed. But they too have been afraid that the 
judgment of the world was going against Christ. They 
have thought that maybe themselves only would be- 
lieve in Christ. And in one respect there has been 
more for them to fear than for the first disciples. All 
infidelity since that earliest day has called itself enlight- 
enment. The generation in which it seems especially 
victorious, when its successes have been most startling, 
is called the “Clearing-up time” or the “Illumina- 
tion.” Voltaire and Diderot have been its high priests, 
its Annas and its Caiaphas. Their judgment was boldly 
pronounced, their prediction that Christianity was about 
to be extinguished was confidently proclaimed. The 
French revolution was an earthquake. It shook all 
lands, even ours. Its rampant atheism threatened to 
overthrow all Christian institutions as well as all sorts 
of tyrannies, all Christian faith as well as all Romish 
superstition. But some even of the terrorists became 
satisfied that if the people had no God it would be 


necessary to invent one; and soon it was once more 
: 3 ) . 
Q 


226 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


evident that for Christendom there was no God but the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ ; indeed, no 
God at all unless Christ could win acceptance as his Son. 

It has taken but a few swift years at the end of the 
nineteenth century to repeat the lesson of the century’s 
beginning. Agnosticism is more specious than the old 
atheism. It has been less scurrilous in opposing Chris- 
tianity but not less deadly. Yet not many years after 
it had set up its altar “To the Unknown God” it be- 
came as clear as Paul tried to make it to the Athenians, 
that he whom they ignorantly worshiped had been made 
known in Christ. The Spirit of Light repeated his 
judgment against the Prince of Darkness. Then criti- 
cism threatened to decide against the veracity of the 
Bible; but the whole process of modern criticism has 
not been more unequivocally hostile to certain formal 
doctrines which had long prevailed about the Book, 
than friendly in the end to the spiritual teachings 
which are the substance of the Book. And the reason 
why the Bible now stands before the world unchal- 
lenged and unchallengeable is that it gives us Christ ; 
which is virtually to say that Christ gives us the Bible. 
It is ever plainer that disbelief of Christ is at bottom - 
immoral; that judgment against him is sought only by 
the Father of lies. 


The disbelief in Christ, which has been the sole 
ground for judgment against his supreme lordship, 
often allies itself to the Sadducean spirit, the aristo- 
cratic intellectualism that dislikes faith, seeks to ex- 
press it in the lowest possible terms, and confine it to 
the nartowest territory. Yet though so pretentious 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 227 


and overbearing, disbelief in the mission of Christ is 
not so dangerous by far as disbelief in the righteous- 
ness of which he is the exposition and the type. No 
righteousness can seem authoritative except a perfect 
and ideal righteousness. Any incomplete law is con- 
demned by the moral insight of men. They may hardly 
know why; but it is condemned because of its incom- 
pleteness. So far as it is seen to be incomplete, it 
seems to be arbitrary. And notwithstanding the ten- 
dency of people to put themselves under religious re- 
strictions and requirements of a thoroughly arbitrary 
sort, and to substitute these in a pharisaic or ascetic 
way for moral duties, none the less in the distinctively 
moral sphere men sooner or later detect, distrust, and 
abhor arbitrariness. Recollecting now that, as men- 
tioned above, the arbitrariness of a moral code may be 
as conspicuous in its slackness as in its excess, in its 
failure to require all that is normal as in its exaction of 
something non-natural; that, in fact, the artificiality of 
a moral standard is marked by puritan excess only in 
limited regions and for comparatively brief periods, 
while popular moral standards the world over in all 
ages are extremely defective in the presence of abso- 
lute morality; bearing this in mind we see how any 
generation may produce its own unsparing John the 
Baptist, its vor clamantis in deserto, who will be sure 
of a hearing because he is so stern, and who will draw 
all Jerusalem and Judea to him, if only he will rebuke 
the shortcomings and iniquities of every class, and 
denounce even the punctilious Pharisees of the day as 
a “brood of vipers.” 

To keep down the general conception of moral duty 


228 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


is the ordinary and pet device of the tempter. If he 
can by any chance foster a skepticism about the need 
to be “righteous over much,” if he can make the ideal 
goodness of Jesus seem beyond all practicality, beyond 
the limits even of good sense, he has taken the surest 
step toward a decorous almost reverent judgment 
against Jesus. But it is after all the most hazardous 
course which the tempter could choose. Again and 
again the Holy Spirit has secured at the bar of the 
world’s conscience a reversal of the false judgments of 
the Prince of this world. Christ is now spoken of 
everywhere as the foremost moral teacher. If no 
other word is uttered in his praise, every one would be 
shocked to hear this claim for him denied. It is 
equally recognized that his teachings were set forth 
by his life quite as impressively, quite as intelligibly, 
and quite as comprehensively as by his precepts. 

It is true that doubt about the claims of Christian 
righteousness has not fed in our day, as in other days, 
on undisguised and publicly tolerated debauchery. 
Vice for vice’s sake is not stainless now. It is only as 
one’s line of business, or his profession, seems to de- 
mand a relaxation of strict uprightness that men grow 
incredulous of rigorous obligation in such cases. A 
ring of politicians, for example, is ready to applaud the 
cynical declaration of a ringleader that he is in poli- 
tics for his own pocket all the time. An association 
like that of the liquor dealers doubtless feels that the 
reproaches of other men against its business are un- 
just and foolish. It may even feel at liberty to take 
any steps to make sure of favorable legislation, and is 
satisfied to leave all personal responsibility with the 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 229 


lawmakers who can be bribed, or the weaklings who 
let themselves become sots. It is a long time since we 
have heard objections to the opera or the drama on ac- © 
count of tendencies and abuses. Both the spoken and 
the musical drama have the field to themselves, clear of 
puritanical protest. The portraits and written sketches 
of actors and actresses, particularly of actresses, oc- 
cupy a space in daily and periodical literature which 
belongs to them if they are the foremost personages 
in our land, and which helps to make them so, if not 
already such. But just in connection with this rapidly 
gained and complete victory of the histrionic art, the 
new productions which it offers are notoriously falling 
off in literary and musical distinction, as well as in social 
propriety and moral decency. Is it not a reproach to the 
newspaper press that some journals cater so to evil, un- 
wholesome taste that they are nicknamed “yellow”? Are 
the lawyers many who would refuse a case in which to 
save a client would be to sacrifice justice? And does the 
existing professional honor condemn them? Are not 
the ministers of the gospel plenty, according to common 
fame, who are controlled by mercenary considerations 
in deciding where they will labor? And do not a great 
many know the seductions of the far worse tempta- 
tion to be pleasers of men? Is it not notorious that 
success in so doing is at cost of the legitimate ends of 
a sacred calling? Surely, the tempter is busy in our 
day lowering the professional as well as.business stand- 
ards of righteousness. And it is a question which many 
hardly face, how far he is succeeding. 

But let no loyal Christian forget that the Holy Spirit 
is to convict the world itself of righteousness and of 


230 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


judgment, and of both together. The righteousness 
of Christ is so far above all conventional standards, 
whether of commerce, of art, of profession, or of 
society, in all forms and phases of associated living, 
that the contrast cannot be permanently concealed. 
We may believe, we may confidently expect, that the 
worse the contrast grows, the deeper the deeds of dark- 
ness are, and the more hostile the general habit is to 
the Light, the more distinct will be the revelation of 
Christ’s righteousness, and the clearer the verdict 
against the Prince of this world with all his following. 
When or how the public conscience is to be aroused 
we need not try to foresee. But neither need we 
forget that it was a gross and general moral degener- 
acy which awakened the protests of Luther against a 
degenerate church, with its degrading doctrines and 
practices; also that it was by preaching Christ that 
the Reformer was in the way to revolutionize Europe. 
Two centuries later the Wesleyan revival in England 
and the corresponding movement in America, were 
occasioned by similar, if less gross, unrighteousness, 
and were remedied by practically the same preaching. 
Again and again, chiefly if not exclusively in the hour 
of the power of darkness, has the Prince of this world 
been judged before the face of the world. The same 
Spirit, we may hope, will effect the same result by the 
same inexhaustible means. 


While the chief interest in studying the office of the 
Holy Spirit to the world turns on the results of his 
direct ministration of the truth to the hearts of worldly 
men, we are not to overlook that by the word which 


OFFICE TO THE WORLD 231 


the Spirit has inspired, and the literature which has 
followed, as well as by the instruction and appeals of 
God’s messengers in every generation, the Holy Spirit 
is less directly convicting the world of sin, of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment. All of us who have turned to 
Christ were led by the Spirit through the agency of 
good men. But by however various means and different 
agents, the one question with which the Holy Spirit has 
ever challenged and will challenge the attention of man- 
kind, is the question once put by our Lord himself to 
his maturing disciples: “‘ What think ye of Christ?” 


CHAPTER XiHT 
OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 


N this chapter more than any other we are in dire 
| need of a strictly biblical theology. We are deal- 
ing with Christian experience, therefore with doctrines 
which are most loved and most firmly believed. But it 
is misunderstanding of experience that breeds nearly 
all, if not quite all, the fanaticisms. Nor is there an- 
other doctrine which opens so temptingly the way to 
extravagance as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. 

At the same time, interpretation of the Bible must 
be shielded from control by the academic spirit. Such 
a spirit invests all the Bible’s teaching with an air of 
unreality. Intellectualism not only deadens but pro- 
fanes the spiritual. Every proposition drawn from 
study of Scripture must be submitted to the test of 
experience. The heart may know whether the head 
tells the truth. No truth can suffer. No scriptural 
doctrine can be overthrown in the trial by experience. 
The Scripture is itself not less the voice of the soul in 
man than it is the voice of the Spirit of God. No 
method of interpreting the Bible can therefore be so 
scholarly as to dispense with the light of the inner life. 
But still less can it be safe in an unscholarly way to catch 
at a striking biblical phrase and build on it a doctrine 
out of the ordinary. 

Happily, although we cannot distinguish in conscious- 
ness the Spirit of God from our own spirits, we can 

232 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 233 


note what our own spirits do when acted on by the 
Spirit of God. Fresh views, which the Bible is thought. 
to afford, should be and are promptly put into practice 
by those who accept these views, and so life early ren- 
ders a decision for or against the engaging novelty. In 
no case is the final judgment of the one court at odds 
with the final decision of the other. Sound expositions 
of the Bible and broad interpretations of life are always 
in accord, Fancifulness of interpreting either Bible or 
life is checked by the steadying and sobering effect of 
studying both. After a time both fanaticism and intel- 
lectualism are self-condemned. 


1. The New Life ; 

What we understand the new life to be turns to a 
noteworthy extent on the direction from which the sub- 
ject is approached. Before taking up this subject the 
mind is invariably prepossessed by related notions. A 
thorough sacramentalist, ascribing the new birth to a 
baptism received not long after natural birth, cannot 
but hold a different view of regeneration from one who 
thinks its occurrence must be restricted to the age of 
moral accountability. If one is settled in opinion that 
the natural heart cannot be touched by spiritual truth, 
how can one agree about the new life itself with him 
who holds that the human will co-operates with the 
Holy Spirit in forming the new life? But faithfulness 
to any of these views abruptly rejects the suggestion of 
physiology, that the new spiritual life is but a moral 
aspect of transition from childhood through youth to 
manhood or womanhood, a period which lasts for the 
soul of a man only “until the skeleton is completely 


234 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


ossified, . . so that there is no further increase in 
stature, and all the teeth are in permanent functional 
position.” Even this conception might hardly be in 
entire accord with a sociological view of the case, which 
would see in the new life something developed, it may 
be, out of the deep, deep thoughts of youth, but after 
all essentially not a new principle of life but a new way 
of living, not a new entity but a new process which is 
to be looked for when young people are wholesomely 
associated during the few years of susceptibility, change, 
‘and fixation. Our present study has already determined 
our point of view; the new life is to be surveyed from 
the side of the Holy Spirit’s activity as set forth by the 
Scriptures and attested by experience. 


(1) Its Production 

Is it proper to speak of the new life as a provision 
for believers? Many will be ready with an emphatic 
No. So far from faith having any part in producing 
the new life, they hold that only the new life can pro- 
duce faith. A man’s inborn depravity incapacitates 
him for receiving the things of the Spirit. This is a 
situation which, it is claimed, can be changed only by 
a sheer creative act of God, an act unmediated by any 
instrumentality, since instrumentality would be useless. 
The truth could not be used because the natural man 
could not feel the truth. Dead Lazarus might hear 
the loud voice of Jesus, for he loved that voice; but a 
dead soul must first receive an inflow of life from the 
Spirit. It has even been held that the gospel ought 
not to be offered to the unregenerate, for they cannot 
but reject it; and so to offer it might beget the pre- 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 235 


sumptuous fancy that the offer could be accepted 
whenever one got ready, a fancy sure to steel the heart 
already hard. | 

It is true that the New Testament, which often men- 
tions that justification is by faith, never teaches in so 
many words that regeneration is by faith; unless we 
find such a statement, as I think we may, in the proem 
of John’s narrative: “As many as received him, he 
gave to them the right to become children of God, to 
them that believe on his name’ (John 1:12). It should 
be admitted that faith is not familiarly put forward as 
a condition of regeneration. A natural omission, be- 
cause faith does not seem germane to an unregenerate 
heart, and to make of it a condition precedent, would 
appear like making the new birth impossible. 

And yet the Good News, or more generally the truth, 
is constantly represented as the instrument in renewal. 
Why else was the gospel preached except that, hearing 
it, men might accept it? “In Christ Jesus I begat you 
through the gospel,’ said outspoken Paul to his Cor- 
inthians (I Cor. 4:15). Peter was not behind in this 
view of things: we are “born again . . . through the 
word of God” (1 Peter 1 : 23). Even James, who really 
makes more of faith than to give away half its credit to 
works, is decided enough on the point before us: God 
“brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1 : 18). 
But what is truth except as it is believed? Or will 
some one accord to a merely mental apprehension of it 
the potence which he denies to faith in it? Is it neces- 
sary that a man should ¢#zzk the truth in which it is 
impossible for him to deeve? This at least was not 
Paul’s opinion. What, then, according to Paul was the 


236 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


good of hearing? This, that “faith comes by hearing” 
(Rom. 10 : 17). 

How, then, resolve this paradox, that the Spirit trans- 
forms only through faith, yet faith is formed only by 
the Spirit? Perhaps in the fashion suggested by a 
quick-witted candidate for ordination I heard asked this 
very question, Which comes first, regeneration or faith ? 
and he replied, “They are like the cannon ball and 
the hole; both go through together.’ If this is the 
solution, it is after all no exception among operations 
of the human soul. Trust and love for fellow-man give 
rise to each other. Who first said part passu may have 
had some fact like this in mind. 

More important still is the fact that the general office 
of the Holy Spirit to minister the truth is here seen to 
be in harmony with a fundamental law of men’s minds. 
All emotions arise at the call of an idea. Cold thought 
sets the heart on fire, as the touch of an icicle makes 
potassium burn. Nothing else than ideas can transform 
character, well or ill. No wonder that the persuasive 
story of the cross should be the Spirit’s instrument for 
a radical transformation. No wonder Paul could be 
eager to preach the gospel everywhere and feltine 
-shame in publishing it. He had a good reason for his 
boldness. The gospel of Christ had proved to be “the 
power of God unto salvation to every one that be- 
lieveth”” (Rom. 1: 16). It is not easy to think that he 
forgot himself in his ardor to defend the freedom of the 
gospel for Greek as well as Jew, and heedlessly ascribed 
more efficacy to the gospel than really belongs to it. 
Or suppose with him that a visitor strays into a gather- 
ing of Corinthian Christians, hears them prophesy, is 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 237 


convicted of all, is judged of all, has the secrets of his 
heart revealed to his own astonished eye, and is so 
struck by the truth heard that he goes out and reports 
God to be among the Christians; is it a regenerate 
person who is so susceptible to truth? Paul calls him 
“an unbeliever and ungifted” (1 Cor. 14 : 24, 25). 
Surely, his conviction by the truth makes the truth a 
good instrument to begin his conversion with. That 
the truth is the Spirit’s instrument and the ministration 
of truth the Spirit’s office, even in the mysterious work 
of the new creation, will be the clearer when we con- 
sider what the nature of regeneration really is. 


(2) Its Nature 

If we ask the New Testament what sort of change 
regeneration is, its answer one would suppose is in its 
names for the change. These are highly descriptive, 
even startling, one and all. But no two names describe 
the same process. No two, therefore, can be taken 
literally. In fact there is every reason for regarding 
them all as figurative. No spiritual entity or operation 
has any but a figurative name. 

Two of these names seem closely enough allied. 
That great change is called a begetting (1 John 2 : 2c; 
1 Cor. 4 : 15) and a birth. But a father is not a 
mother. The mother name is the most familiar of all, 
made so by our Lord’s own selection of it, as reported 
by John. Hecalls the change a new birth or a birth 


from above: “Ye must be born again” (John 3:7; 
ola. ames ee. 15.504> Peter 17.23). due! Paul calle it 
anew creation: ‘If any one is in Christ he is a new 


creature pi(2Gore5<-17):Gal.-6.-14)., Since bigth and 


238 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


‘creation both refer to something new, so far these terms 
are in harmony, but the processes are utterly different. 
Birth produces an individual by propagation from 
parents; creation by origination without parents, even 
without pre-existing materials. If among us men born 
of woman suddenly appeared a man born of no one, 
there might be no difference in the result of the two 
processes, but in the processes there would be differ- 
ence to the last degree. Such a difference would be 
felt by all and most insisted on by those who know the 
most. Regeneration cannot be both new birth and 
new creation. 

Paul and John agree to call it an animation of the 
dead, a bright and happy term. God hath “ quickened 
us together with Christ” (Eph. 2: 5); “ We know that 
we have passed from death unto life” (1 John 3 : 14). 
But Paul also grimly reverses the figure, and muses on 
regeneration as a painful dying, a crucifixion with Christ 
(Rom. 6 : 3-11; Gal. 2:20; 6:14). In one of these 
cases he shows the lengths he will go in trying to tell 
how radical the change is; for he does not stop short 
of describing it as the extinction of his own being and 
the substitution of Christ for himself. “I have been 
crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ 
liveth in me” (Gal. 2 : 20). If now we insist on taking 
this literally we have the unheard-of doctrine that the 
souls not of the unregenerate, but of the regenerate, 
are annihilated, and Christ incarnated in their place. 

In another passage, with moderation as marked as his 
vehemence is in that last instance, Paul speaks of the 
change as an emancipation. We are “made free from 
sin” (Rom. 6: 18). The burden of the bondage may 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 239 


be odious, even horrible; we are delivered “from the 
body of death” (Rom. 7 : 24, 25). “Freedom” is our 
Lord’s calm and brave word for it, “The truth shall 
make you free. . . If the Son shall make you free, ye 
shall be free indeed”’ (John 8 : 32, 36). With Jesus it 
is even a process of enlightenment, a learning of him 
(Matt. 11 : 25-29); while James falls back upon the 
homely mystery of farming, and styles the new birth 
an implanting of truth (1 : 21). 

Now there is no reason to suppose that regeneration 
involves processes of both begetting and birth, or of 
birth besides creation. It cannot be a dying and a 
rising, although it has aspects distinguishable by these 
names. Nor is it at once an extinction of personality 
and a continuance of personality. It could not pre- 
cisely consist in a setting free and a lighting up, nor in 
any one of all these processes and be an implanting too. 
That is to say, the Scriptural names for the Spirit’s 
work being incompatible with each other do not exactly 
describe the Spirit’s work. All but one of them must 
be figures of speech, and if we could agree upon one to 
be taken literally, that too would have to be taken fig- 
uratively, since all are physical titles for spiritual re- 
alities. But they are figures so strong as to indicate a 
change both deep and strange. Regeneration is radical 
and mysterious. 

There is one text which, though not free from a figu- 
rative character, as indeed it could not be, seems to 
notify us what is the need and what the essential ele- 
ment of regeneration. Paul has been telling the vivid 
story of his conflict with “the law of sin.” By daw he 
means a ruling principle. And he says, “The ruling 


240 THE. HOLY -SPIRIT 


‘principle of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set me free 
from the ruling principle of sin and death” (Rom. 
8:2). The bondage is moral and the deliverance is 
moral. The need is moral and so also is the provision. 
The tyranny of sin, the liberty of righteousness ; that 
is what regeneration needs to help us out of; this is 
what it helps us into. 

But what the metaphysics of regeneration is there is 
no one to tell us. Just what the Holy Spirit does to 
the soul in order to reverse its ruling affection, to trans- 
form its fundamental moral quality, it is even presump- 
tuous to affirm. Have we forgotten what Jesus said on 
this very point to Nicodemus? Birth of the Spirit is 
recognizable but unexplainable. We hear the wind but 
do not know its source nor its goal (John 3 : 6-8). 
Are we at liberty, then, confidently to affirm that “the 
new man” which we ought to “put on” is an entity 
distinct from “the old man” which we ought to “put 
off” ? (Eph. 4 : 22-24); that “ whosoever is born of 
God” and “doth not commit sin” and “cannot sin, 
because he is born of God” (1 John 3 : 9), is another 
being from the one who deceives himself and has no 
truth in him if he says he has no sin in him? (1 John 
1: 8); or that one maybe can be both sinless and a 
sinner at the same time? that the soulish man cannot 
receive the things of the Spirit of God because he has 
no spirit of his own, while he that is spiritual judges all 
things because he has a soul and a spirit too2(1 Cor, 
2:14, 15); that those of us who become « partakers of 
the divine nature” ( 2 Peter 1 : 4) have received an ad- 
dition to our soul-stuff, and are now, as we were not 
before, in species partly divine? that to say “ Christ is 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 241 


our life’’ (Col. 3 : 4) is to say that Christ has become 
literally our vital principle, as much ourselves as our 
own souls are? that the regenerated man who finds him- » 
self doing what he would not may make bold to declare 
that this is not after all his own doing, but that sin does 
itin him? (Rom. 7: 15-17.) Is all or any of this what we 
are to accept and announce as the metaphysics of the 
new birth? Can there be a new self plus the old self ? 
Is there a new nature besides the old nature? except as 
there are new affections as well as old affections, new 
moral qualities better than the old moral qualities. 

Or has our very self been made almost as good as 
new? It needs to be. It was the very self of the first 
man, if we may be permitted any longer to believe in a 
first man, that fell, and it is the damaged nature in- 
herited from him, which sorely enough requires not to 
become another being, but to be renewed after the image 
of him that created us (Col. 3 : 10). Is not the believer 
made partaker of the divine nature in the sense that he 
is becoming godly, not partly God, Christlike, not 
Christ ; that according to God’s gracious predestination 
for his people he is being conformed to the image of his 
Son, called, justified, glorified? Is not just this what 
we have individually rejoiced in, that, while we hardly 
felt like the same persons, we knew all the time that we 
were the very same, transformed ? 

If no one can expound for us the metaphysics of 
regeneration, any one can tell what men need. They 
need to be saved from sin; they need that the hearts 
born disloyal to God should become loyal; supreme 
self-love ought to be supplanted by supreme love for 


Christ. If the new birth does this, this is all that it 
R 


242 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


must do; if it does not effect this, it has failed, no 
matter how mysterious, how dumbfounding the change. 
We need not hesitate to say that, if any one is discon- 
tented to know only the ascertainable moral character of 
regeneration, to concede indeterminateness in its meta- 
physics, he is belittling instead of magnifying the Spirit’s 
work, he is making great account of the intellectual and 
small account of the spiritual. We may reconcile our- 
selves to invincible ignorance about what regeneration 
is, if only we experience what it does. And it does this: 
it provides for conversion of love and life. The Spirit re- 
generates a man, but a man converts himself, and truth 
is the effective instrument in both processes. 

One might very well be satisfied with concluding that 
regeneration is a radical moral change, spiritual but not 
literally vital. That is, regeneration is a change im the 
quality not in the quantity of the soul. 


2. Progress of the New Life 

If unwelcome differences of opinion exist as to the 
nature of regeneration, as to sanctification they are 
confusing and distressing. Here is a real evil. The 
evil is aggravated by the fact that those alone who hold 
peculiar views are able to gain the public ear. It easily 
follows that these brethren are the only ones who seem 
to most people to care for spiritual progress, But there 
are so many who do care, especially so many who are 
not blind to the meagreness of their own attainments, 
that one who comes with a fresh and urgent word has 
always been able to count on a hearing. 

Meanwhile, they who distrust the new theories and 
new measures, in particular those who have tried all 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 243 


the novelties and been disappointed by them all in 
turn, remain dumb. No one likes to set himself against 
the good men and women who are all aglow with what 
they count good news. The old army chaplain had 
pathetic and wonderful stories in plenty, after the war, 
about soldiers who came quietly to him with keepsakes 
and a message to their dear ones, because they were 
going into battle with a mystic premonition of being 
shot. But I never heard the chaplain tell about the 
premonitions which were not fulfilled, nor about the 
last messages which happily there was no occasion to 
send. Now when we have listened attentively to all 
that experience has to say in favor of strange and 
happy gifts and graces, may we not hope that some 
among our spiritual mentors will be less partial to 
remarkable stories than the old chaplains were? And 
who knows but something not startling at all, only ex- 
plicit, profitable, and not unaccountable, may be forth- 
coming in favor of those scriptural teachings about 
sanctification which are so obvious that no one thinks 
of denying them, no, nor very often of so much as 
mentioning them? May not progress in the new life 
be possible by means which do. not at once strike us as 
the ingenious invention of a pious and persuasive, but 
possibly not thoroughly informed and deferential stu- 
dent of God’s word? The advocate of any religious 
novelty may be counted on to have at his tongue’s end 
a few favorable texts, which he expounds in a way per- 
haps never before thought of, and which biblical the- 
ology could not for a moment accept. Now the only 
protection against whimsies on the part of those who 
devoutly love and humbly accept the teachings of their 


244 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Bibles, is the comprehensive and thorough survey which 
biblical theology practises, and which alone it can in- 
dorse. If a compendious statement of results afforded 
by this method does not prove satisfactory, no other 
course is open for these pages deliberately to follow. 


There is one question about sanctification which is 
the pith of many questions, and in the presence of 
which all other questions on this subject fade into 
insignificance. That question is, Can the highest Chris- 
tian attainments be reached by a process of growth 
which the Holy Spirit fosters and guides, or only by a 
special gift of the Spirit of God on the fulfillment of 
special conditions by the spirit of man? The point of 
view, the direction of approach, is important. 


(1) The Parodox 

The nature of the case with the regenerate but un- 
sanctified is not obscure. We can know from it what 
is needed. Stated as carefully as possible, regenera- 
tion is such a work of the Spirit of God on the soul of 
a man as inclines him to love God supremely. That 
new love is inward conversion, and a new course of life 
is outward conversion, for the sake of which the Holy 
Spirit regenerates. 

The moral change in regeneration is so radical that, 
from the nature of the case, sin shouid thereafter be 
impossible. The newly regenerate often feels that he 
can never sin again. He is feeling just what John 
alleged in his extremest statement on this subject: 
«Whosoever has been begotten of God does not com- 
mit sin, because his seed abides in him; and he cannot 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 245 


sin, because he has been begotten of God” (1 John 3: 
9g). Jesus said in effect the same thing: “If any one 
love me he will keep my words” (John 14: 23). What’ 
less is involved in the sound saying of James: “ Faith 
if it have not works is dead in itself”? (2: 17.) Even 
Paul goes to equal lengths with John, but does not 
seem to, because his terms are not so boldly paradox- 
ical. And yet they are sufficiently so. What else is 
this: “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead to sin, but 
alive to God”? (Rom.6:11.) Or this: “I have been 
crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ. 
lives in me’? (Gal. 2:20.) Or this: “How shall we 
who died to sin, live any longer therein” ? (Rom. 6:2.) 
Who can tell how? 

We cannot sin, but we do. The situation is a self- 
contradiction. We have a word for it, ¢xconsistency. 
Things do not hang together; they exclude each other. 
Each makes the other impossible; yet there they are, 
side by side, supreme love for God, and intrusive relish 
for a sin. John himself admits the actuality of this 
impossibility. The child of God cannot sin, he says; 
but also says, “If any one sin, we have an Advocate 
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” And 
that John refers to the sins of the regenerate, impossi- 
ble but actual sins, we are assured by his next words: 
‘He is a propitiation for our sins; and not for ours 
only, but also for the whole world” (1 John 2 : 1, 2). 

Now let us not overlook that this inconsistency is 
matched in men’s ordinary relations. Our best loved 
friend may say, “ You do not love me as you pretend, 
or you could not do me this ill turn.” But we do love 
our friend, and would make any great sacrifice for him; 


246 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


yet we are also guilty of this petty unfriendliness. 
From the top of our Mount Washington the eye can 
sweep a circuit of many hundred miles; but the tip of 
one’s little finger, if held close to the eye, shuts out the 
whole horizon, or all the stars of heaven. Some trivial 
temptation, if allowed close enough, can for the time 
cover our deepest love and strongest purpose; and so 
we sin against Him for whom no doubt a plenty of us 
would lay down our lives. 


(2) The Solution 

So paradoxical is the situation. Regeneration has 
effected a transformation so thorough that of itself it 
leaves no place for anything short of absolute moral 
perfection, and yet to escape from persistent and har- 
rowing imperfections a process of sanctification 1s 
necessary. It cannot be a more searching process than 
was the new birth. The Spirit cannot be mightier than 
it was in the new creation. No change is hinted at in 
the New Testament to compare with that change. If 
sanctification is really a special act of the Spirit, an- 
alogous to regeneration, this ought to be mentioned 
somewhere. It is nowhere mentioned, and therefore 
not to be believed in. Such a gift of the Spirit of God 
as provides for the new birth is all, if it abides, which 
could be needed for progress of the new life. It is in- 
credible, and it is nowhere intimated that the Holy 
Spirit having begun such a good work in us will leave 
it there at its beginning in its babyhood, or needs to do 
more for its fostering than to keep alive the relation 
which he has himself established. Nothing is full- 
grown at birth. From the state of the case, then, it is 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 247 


certain that the Spirit which created us anew in Christ 
Jesus is needed, and is able to transform us progres- 
sively by the constant renewing of our minds, That a 
special gift besides the abiding gift is required the case 
in no way indicates, and the silence of Scripture does 
not allow us to concede. 

This by no means precludes long preparation and 
rapid culmination. The great decisions are abrupt per- 
haps in most cases, but if wisely formed they had been 
slowly maturing. There is often something volcanic, 
convulsive in the lives of the strongest characters. But 
this is not uniformly true, and should never be proposed 
as an ideal to one’s self or others. Saul of Tarsus had 
to experience such a conversion, but where does he hint 
that one such experience was not enough for him ? 


(3) The Means 


That an extraordinary operation of the Holy Spirit 
is not requisite for sanctification is as plain when we 
look at the means as in considering the Agent. The 
Agent is the Holy Spirit ; the means is the truth. The 
prayer of our Lord was, “ Sanctify them in the truth ; 
thy word is truth” (John 17:17). Paul gives thanks 
for the Thessalonians, beloved of the Lord, whom God 
had chosen to salvation “in sanctification of the Spirit 
and belief of the truth” (2 Thess. 2: 13); and Peter 
puts it with admirable precision, “ Ye have purified 
your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit” 
(iPetersts: 22): . 

There are but two imaginable ways of using truth for 
such a purpose. One way regards it as something said, 
as in effect a magical formula, an incantation which 


248 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


makes sure of a benefit without any intelligible relation 
to it. Many may charge their devotional habits with 
this irrationality and superstition. To read just so 
much of Scripture daily, say a chapter, and to clinch 
their petitions by a closing formula, without which 
prayer would go for naught, like “ for Christ’s sake,” or 
‘for thy name’s sake,” and to exercise no reflection on 
what is read or said, has no more of Christian character 
than there is in refusing to be one of thirteen at table 
or to begin a journey on Friday. All deference to 
“sions” and formulas is a relic of the lowest form of 
paganism, namely, the worship of fetishes, queer ob- 
jects, and happenings. God could not conceivably 
make his will known in such ways, or tie up his gifts 
with trivialities ; but the devil might, and some malign 
influence succeeds thus in perverting the holy usages of 
Christianity. One who believes in God ought to hate 
and loathe this bondage to superstition in all its forms. 
Let us trust in God, make haste to do his will, and defy 
Satan with all his trumpery “signs,” above all taking 
care that the very habits by which we make sure to 
keep ourselves for God do not become a snare to us. 
The other way of using truth regards it as an idea 
which, being established as a conviction, evokes suitable 
emotion and secures a corresponding decision of the 
will. This is the process through which ideas are in- 
cessantly modifying character. No one can reasonably 
or reverently expect the Holy Spirit to use the truth in 
any other way. A process fixed by the laws of the 
human mind was fixed by the Creator, and only by 
such a process can the Spirit of God lead human minds 
toward full growth. If we forget Christ we cannot be 


OFFICE TO BELIELERS 249 


ruled by love for him ; if we do not think over his com- 
mandments we do not “have” them and will not 
“keep” them (John 14:21); and thus the ministry 
of the Spirit is too often excluded from our lives. To 
dwell upon attractive evil is to become evil; to dwell 
upon the good is to make it attractive, and so ourselves 
to become good. No other way can be relied upon. 

Such a conclusion as to the Spirit’s efficiency debars 
magical sanctifications. And not less than magical are 
the alleged abrupt transitions, which without the instru- 
mentality of truth convert a low-grade Christian into 
the highest type of saint. These changes cannot be 
wrought by aid of truth, for they are marked by inert- 
ness rather than activity of mind, by submission to a 
molding from without rather than by co-operation with 
the Holy Spirit ina development from within, by pas- 
sivity which debars the use of ideas rather than by med- 
itation, which appropriates ideas. That which Peter 
said to Cornelius and his friends is normally going on 
inus: ‘The Holy Spirit . . . purified their hearts by 
faith”’ (Acts 15 : 9). 

John’s claims for the truth were examined in Chap- 
ter XII. For our present purpose we note only the 
extraordinary fact that the fourth Gospel, while it has 
most to say concerning the divinity of Christ, insists 
most on his office as a teacher. To be sure, not John 
alone cries up the truth. Paul’s prayer for the Ephe- 
sians is that “the eyes of their understanding may be 
enlightened” (1:18). He “counts all things but loss 
for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his 
Lord” (Phil. 3 : 8). And he approaches the position 
of John when he writes to Timothy, “I know whom I 


250 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


have believed” (2 Tim. 1:12). But John never says 
with Paul that “knowledge puffeth up,’ no, not even 
for the sake of exalting love (1 Cor. 8:1). See what 
John says: “The truth shall make you free”’ (8 : 32); 
“The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit and 
are life” (6 : 63); ‘Already ye are clean because of the 
word which I have spoken unto you” (15 : 3); finally, 
what we would not have dared to say, in fact do not 
repeat nor quite take for reality: “This is life eternal, 
that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom thou didst send” (17 : 3). 

These prodigious texts and teachings we leave to the 
Unitarians. The texts have no office in evangelical 
preaching, so far as I have heard it, nor for the teach- 
ings has a place been found in orthodox theology. But 
the fact that John couples these almost unbounded 
claims for the truth with the highest claims for Jesus 
ought to notify us that the Unitarians can hardly have 
gone into the merits of the case when they acknowl- 
edge Christ merely as a prophet. If in imagination 
we stand where John did, recognize Jesus as God with 
us, and enjoy the same intimacy with him, then it 
must seem to us, as it did to John, that so to know 
Jesus was nothing short of eternal life. It was a trans- 
forming intimacy, only the closest intimacy, of which 
Jesus could say, “No longer do I call you servants ; 
.. but I have called you friends; because all things 
that I heard from my Father I made known to you” 
(15:15). Jesus took his disciples into his heart when 
he opened to them his mind. Always “the secret of 
the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show 
them his covenant’”’ (Ps. 25 : 14). 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 251 


This is the royal road to holiness, namely, intimacy 
with Christ. It is our road, when the Holy Spirit takes 
the things of Christ and shows them to us. Paul’s— 
phrases resound with the dignity of it: “I bow my 
knees to the Father, of whom the whole family in 
heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, 
according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened 
with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ 
may dwell in your hearts through faith; that ye, being 
rooted and grounded in love, may be able to com- 
prehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, 
and depth, and height ; and to know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled with all 
the fulness of God” (Eph. 3 : 14-19). No other power 
can ‘make for righteousness” as does intimacy with 
Christ, imparted and matured by the Holy Spirit’s 
ministry of the truth. The mental activity which it 
requires ought to be required. A thoughtless sanctifi- 
cation should be impossible, and is impossible. The per- 
sistence which it implies is from the nature of the case 
indispensable. What consecration can be found in a 
flaccid will? Could sterling character be acquired less 
laboriously? If the highest ranges of Christian living 
seem to be less easily attained by careful obedience to 
the truth than by a mystical uplift to which one has 
only passively to submit, ought the prize of a high call- 
ing to be reached without effort? If our utmost vigor 
is demanded, our Leader never failed to show the like 
devotion. Paul said that to buffet his body was the 
price of bringing it into subjection and of saving him- 
self from the fate of a castaway (1 Cor. 9: 24-27). The 
divine inworking requires us to work out our own salva- 


252 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


tion (Phil. 2: 12). We shall need patience to run the 
race where Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith 
(Heb. 12 : 2); and though the outward man weakens in 
such a struggle, “the inward man is renewed,’ not once 
for all, “but day by day” (2 Cor. 4 : 16). 

It is no doubt possible for a man to make an account- 
ing now and then with his ideals, to discover wherein 
he has fallen short and to decide how he may mend the 
matter. But it is disastrous to take for granted that 
the whole business of life must be suspended for the 
sake of taking an inventory, and meanwhile to go on in 
a slack way because one does not feel ready for just 
that process. It is not the scriptural way. The Bible 
teaches that the best we can do is a continuance of 
what we have already done. ‘“ Having begun in the 
Spirit, are we now made perfect” in another way? (Gal. 
3:3.) ‘ Whereunto we have attained, in the same let us 
walk”’ (Phil. 3 : 16). We have made many a sad mud- 
dle, no doubt, of our attempts to “ walk in the Spirit” 
(Gal. 5 : 16) ; nevertheless we do not give over our hope 
nor our determination. “For we through the Spirit by 
faith wait for the hope of righteousness’ (Gal. 5 :5). 

“ Uphold me according to thy word, that I may live ; 
and let me not be ashamed of my hope” (Ps. 119 : 116). 


, 
4 


8. Encouragement of the New Life 

Under the head of Progress in the New Life nothing 
has been said about the peace and joy that figure so ex- 
tensively in the experiences of those who claim to be 
sanctified. So largely do these states of sensibility 
prevail that to have peace and joy, if it is not exactly 
what being holy consists in to the minds of many, is 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 253 


apparently what they aimed at in seeking for « holi- 
ness.’ Almost all clear-sighted Christians feel that this 
is a pitiful and hurtful mistake. If to feel well is the 
same as to de well, every bodily ailment could easily be 
cured for a while. 

And yet feeling well is a proper accompaniment. of 
good health, whether of body or soul. It is an encour- 
agement of the new life. If it comes to choosing be- 
tween a religion that consists in eating or not eating, in 
drinking or not drinking, and one that turns on glad- 
ness of spirit, we might not like being reduced to such an 
alternative, but we would have to admit that, while the 
devotees of religious excitement often exhibit something 
like a Bacchic frenzy, at least it is not an orgy of wine. 
When Paul learned that Roman Christians were wast- 
ing their force in disputes about food and drink, what 
apter thing could he say than that “The kingdom of God 
is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and 
joy in the Holy Spirit”? (Rom. 14:17.) People whose 
religion makes them contentious had better be told that 
God’s reign is peace. Those whose lives are passed in 
gloomy contemplation of their neighbor’s market basket 
would find it more religious to have joy in the Holy 
Spirit. And if one is making everything turn on what 
he puts or refuses to put into his mouth, somehow he is 
missing what Christ said about the things that come 
from the mouth defiling (Matt. 15 : 11), and what Paul 
says of righteousness, not meats, as the stuff that God’s 
kingdom is concerned with. To be spiritually minded 
is to belong to God, and “to be spiritually minded is 
life and peace” (Rom. 8 : 6). We must certainly avoid 
both the belittling error of making feeling the essence 


254 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


of spirituality and the benumbing error of conceding to 
feeling no proper place. Its place is to encourage the 
new life. Happiness is a reward, an invigoration, and 
an inducement. With this obtrusive and practically im- 
portant factor in the problem allotted its proper place, we 
may enter into the real merits of the case. It is the 
problem of Christian assurance, or as some prefer to 
state it, the Witness of the Spirit. 


(1) Representative Views 

An entirely characteristic doctrine of Calvinists has 
been that, if any one finds himself in a state of grace, 
he knows it can be only because he is the object of 
God’s election unto life ; and if he knows that God has 
elected him unto life, he may feel sure of his final salva- 
tion. It is a sufficiently logical deduction from the 
doctrine of unconditional predestination. The difficulty 
which it presents is in the application of it. How may 
I know that I am in a state of grace? Instead of being 
at liberty to infer final perseverance from regeneration, 
we are rather to infer regeneration from final persever- 
ance. The words of Jesus are explicit: “If ye abide 
in my word, ye are truly my disciples” (John 8 : 31). 
The same fact is put in singular form by the writer to 
the Hebrews: ‘We have become partakers of Christ, 
if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to 
the end” (Heb. 3: 14). Oras John says of defections 
from the faith: “They went out from us, but they were 
not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have 
abode with us”’ (1 John 2: 19). 

These are not unreasonable statements. One may 
be assured that he loves Christ only while he keeps 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 255 


Christ’s commandments (John 14:21). From the point 
of view of Calvinist doctrine, which denies that the re- 
generate can become unregenerate, a condition of soul 
which gives no present mark of regeneracy is not to be 
regarded as a lapse from which a child of God is cer- 
tain to be restored, but rather as an indication that one 
has never been a child of God. This Calvinistic type 
of doctrine furnishes strong assurance to the faithful, 
and stern warning to the unfaithful. It has every pos- 
sible word of courage for those who are God’s own, and 
every startling word of terror for those who give no 
proof that they belong to God. If Jesus said that those 
the Father had given him none is “able to pluck out 
of his Father’s hand” (John 10: 29); he also said a 
word which was meant to bring all unbelievers to a 
stand, “No man can come to me unless the Father who 
sent me draw him” (John 6 : 44). 

And still it is probable that a great number of cold- 
hearted and disobedient professors of faith in Christ 
are half-consciously resting all their hope of eternal life 
on past indications of the new life. Yet these former 
indications lost their significance for the future when 
they ceased to exist. 


After Luther had matured his doctrine, he saw and 
taught that to be justified by faith in Christ brings with 
it, from the nature of the case, assurance of justification. 
This assurance he recognized as a witness of the Holy 
Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit that imparts faith. 
To believe in Christ for forgiveness would seem to be 
to believe that one is forgiven. This is certainly Paul’s 
way of regarding the matter, and Luther strikingly repro- 


256 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


duces Paul in his experience and his doctrine. “ Being 
justified by faith, let us have peace with God through 
our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). Why not? How 
lack peace with God if we have faith in God? 

To Luther faith brings assurance of much more than 
forgiveness. It includes assurance that God’s word is 
true, and that the requirement which one follows is the 
very requirement of God.  Vacillation, timidity, and 
feebleness mark the faint believer's life. “We must 
stand in such certainty of God’s speaking and working 
in us, that our faith can say, ‘What I have spoken and 
done, that has God done and spoken,’ so that I am 
ready to die for it; else, if I am not certain of my affair, 
it stands upon sand, whilst God has ordained that our 
conscience must stand upon the solid rock.” True faith 
alone, says Luther, has true knowledge of God. It is 
a perpetual looking at Christ. It is master, judge, and 
rule of all doctrine and prophecy." 

No doubt faith is cognitive before it can be trust. 
It discerns spiritual reality, and, discerning, confides. 
This relation unites the view of faith characteristic of 
John with that which is characteristic of Paul. To John, 
as we saw above (p. 216 f.) faith is believing Christ ; to 
Paul it is trusting Christ. But neither apostle over- 
looks, still less excludes or could exclude, the other's 
meaning. Yet between knowing and trusting is an- 
other element in faith, namely, imagining, that is, im- 
aging the unseen. Because Luther did not give this 
element its dues, he insisted rather harshly that a Chris- 
tian ought not only to trust in Christ but feel sure that 
he is safe. Nearer the fact is the remark of Henry 


1 See Dorner’s ‘‘ History of Protestant Theology,’’ Vol. I., pp. 240, 241. 


OFFICE TO" BELIEVERS 257 


Ward Beecher, that a man may have faith enough to 
be saved and not faith enough to feel sure of it. He 
may entrust himself to Christ without forming so lively © 
an image, so strong a “ realizing sense” of Christ as to 
be happy in his trust and calm in his confidence. 

Deficiency in imagination of spiritual things is com- 
mon. To many believers neither God nor Christ nor 
heaven nor existence out of the body seem realities. 
Inevitably these people miss the stimulus and the joy 
of imaging life after death and heaven and Christ and 
God. All these are accepted as realities, but do not 
seem like realities. Faithful men, deficient in imaging 
power, act indeed with reference to these realities ; but 
they are Christians of firm principle, not of wholesome 
and happy sentiment. They have faith enough to be 
saved, but not faith enough to enjoy being saved. 
Others may reproach them, I cannot. I do not believe 
that the majority of people are so constituted that for 
them a constant vision of the invisible is practicable. 
It is enough if they are able daily without emotion, 
without the delightful support of a glimpse into the 
better world, to commit their souls to the unseen, un- 
realized Saviour, and daily renew their purpose to do 
his will. 

But besides doctrines of assurance built on doctrines 
of predestination and of justification is another, which 
is allied to the doctrine of regeneration by the Holy 
Spirit. It is a favorite doctrine with Wesleyans. It 
teaches that assurance is of two kinds, the witness of 


1The substance of this paragraph appeared in an article by the 
author in ‘‘ The Baptist Commonwealth.”’ 
S) 


258 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


the Spirit of God and the witness of our own spirits. 
The former is direct. It is really a witness to our son- 
ship. Two texts are especially relied on: “The Spirit 
itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are chil- 
dren of God” (Rom. 8 : 16); “And because ye are 
sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our 
hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Gal. 4: 6). The wit- 
ness of our own spirit is the recognition by ourselves of 
changes produced in us through the new birth.’ 

That “the fruits of the Spirit’’ indicate the new 
spiritual life all agree. The only question is as to di- 
rect witness of the Spirit. But a fair consideration of 
this question involves the much wider issue of true 
and false mysticism. This issue is involved in all far- 
reaching study of the source, nature, progress, encour- 
agement, and resources of the new life. The present 
connection is suitable as any for its cursory examination. 


(2) Mysticism 

The relation of the Holy Spirit to the human spirit 
is an unfathomable mystery. How he operates it is im- 
possible to know. We may make sure, indeed, that he 
operates only by the co-operation of our own spirits in 
ways promised by the word of God. An activity of the 
Spirit not so promised could not be distinguished from 
out-of-the-way movements of the human mind. The one 
office promised, the all-including ministry of truth, isa 
signal illustration of the co-action of the Spirit of God 
with men’s minds. The truth, however reached, must 
be thought. The Spirit aids our thinking and so secures 
the aim of the truth, namely, true living. 


1 See Miley’s ‘‘ Systematic Theology,” Vol. Ts; pp; 3394 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 259 


Such, then, is the realm and range of true mysticism. 
The truth which the Holy Spirit first imparted to 
apostles and prophets he so illumines that its verity 
is assured; it becomes a conviction, a felt thought. 
Thoughts felt supply motives to action. Thoughts 
strongly enough felt issue in volitions and volitions in 
conduct. It must here be borne in mind that the Chris- 
tian life is not an aggregate of unrelated decisions and 
acts. It is the Spirit’s office to illuminate fundamental 
truth and keep alive fundamental principles of conduct. 
The Spirit testifies to Christ, and thus energizes faith, 
love, and loyalty Christward. It begat these in beget- 
ting the new life; it maintains the new life by maintain- 
ing these. How it acts on the mind in so doing isa 
mystery, but the belief that it so acts is a proper Chris- 
tian mysticism. 

False mysticism, mysticism pure and simple, as held 
by both Christians and heathen, is the doctrine that 
the Spirit of God directly imparts an idea, an emotion 
ora power. That power may be over nature and mirac- 
ulous; it may be over one’s self, issuing in sinlessness; 
or over others, as claimed by the Keswick school. 

In order to make out this alleged direct operation of 
the divine Spirit on passive human spirits, it would be 
necessary to show that it had been included either in 
the New Testament’s promise of the Holy Spirit or in 
its illustration of his functions. But while mysticism 
could not be proved from experience alone, on the other 
hand not even the New Testament’s support would be 
sufficient if unattended by experience on our patee Sit 
might easily be that direct spiritual operations existed 
at one time and had been withdrawn. 


260 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Now false mysticism, which is mysticism pure and 
simple, is in a peculiar position with regard to scriptural 
support. It is not without a support from the Old Tes- 
tament which is withheld by the New. The mechanical 
inspirations which were ascribed to ancient prophets, 
the supposed control of their minds by the Spirit of 
God as absolutely as our mind may control the unthink- 
ing body, this lower kind of inspiration which sought 
to be the highest, and which finds unmistakable illus- 
tration only in the frenzied behavior of King Saul 
among the prophets, or in case of the unintelligent gift 
of tongues among the Corinthians, such an inspiration 
as this illustrates. that immediate control of the human 
spirit by the divine which mysticism insists upon. Of 
course, such an illustration would be most unsatisfac- 
tory to mystics, but it is all that the Bible unequivo- 
cally affords. The higher results of divine activity in 
the sphere of the human illustrate the coaction of both 
human and divine. 

The obscure doctrine of angels, good and bad, would 
have to be canvassed in a thorough investigation of 
mysticism. It would seem, although the point is not 
quite clear, that in New Testament times angelic or 
demonic spirits were believed to act directly on the 
minds and bodies of men. Possessions and obsessions 
by demons were at least unhesitatingly accepted as real. 
Paul’s saying, “ Spirits of prophets are subject to proph- 
ets,” can hardly have another meaning. The spirits 
were regarded by him as sent from God and as perform- 
ing their office in subordination to those whom they in- 
spired. These important chapters, the twelfth and the 
fourteenth in Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians, 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 261 


upon the whole present the personal Spirit of God im- 
personally ; but this particular verse (14 : 32), can hardly 
be understood as identifying the Holy Spirit with a 
sertes of influences. Can Paul here be speaking of the 
one personal Spirit of God as “the spirits of the proph- 
ets”? John’s injunction, “Believe not every spirit, 
but try the spirits whether they are of God” (1 John 
4:1), looks in the same direction. So also his refer- 
ence to “every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has 
come in the flesh,” and “ every spirit that does not con- 
fess Jesus’’ (ver. 2 and 3). The natural meaning is 
that spirits good and evil in those days took possession, 
or sought possession of human minds and spoke by 
human tongues. 

But this does not furnish illustration of the process 
alleged by mysticism, unless the mind of the man in- 
spired was without share in the result and merely pas- 
sive, like a photographic plate exposed to light. The 
very contents of the prophetic message, always so close 
to the prophet’s own experience, exclude such a fancy. 
Even if a liability existed to irrational passivity under the 
influence of good spirits, as it certainly existed in the 
case of demoniacal possessions, Paul’s directions to the 
prophets were a warning against self-surrender. To “try 
the spirits’’ also implied that reason could not be de- 
barred from a share in the message. Paul’s assurance 
that prophesying would lay bare the secrets of an unbe- 
liever’s heart (1 Cor. 14 : 24, 25) means that the prophet 
thought by the Spirit’s aid just what a knowing man 
would think. Also that no one speaking in the Spirit 
of God says Jesus is accursed, and that no one can say 
Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12: 3), 


”) 


262 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


shows the contrast between being “carried away to 
dumb idols”’ (ver. 2) and being led of God. But in all 
this the Christian was actively loyal to Christ. Paul 
never held that the Holy Spirit so entirely possessed 
a man, that the Spirit and not the believer believed ; 
that in the hour of inspiration the Spirit was the only 
thinker, and alone served God. How contrary this to 
Paul’s account of spiritual gifts is too obvious to point 
out in detail. When the Holy Spirit or holy spirits 
animated a man it was the man that was animated. The 
New Testament is far from sustaining a false mysticism. 
The mind of man in those days was active as well as 
impressed. It was active in receiving impressions. 


Experience at the present day fully corroborates this 
conclusion. The most rudimentary observation of our 
own mental processes refuses to tolerate the idea that 
the Holy Spirit is one spirit and ours another spirit, 
busied in us with thoughts, feelings, or resolves. To ob- 
servation of others, above all to self-observation, it is 
one’s own spirit which does all that is done. The Spirit 
of God aids us to do what we do well. If he does all, 
we do nothing. But our need is in all ways to serve 
God. If the Spirit, instead of aiding and directing our 
minds, hearts, and wills, takes our place, we are not yet 
beginning the true life; certainly the Spirit is not in the 
least promoting that life. 

Prudence too raises the question how the Spirit of 
God, if he directly moves us, not employing the co- 
operation of our own faculties, can be distinguished 
from an evil spirit. It is scriptural and it is sane to 
reply that we must use our reason in order to know 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 263 


that what takes place in us is reasonable and right. No 
thought about divine things, no feeling about God or 
man or ourselves, no decision to act is proper to sub- 
mit to, however impressive, unless it accords with other 
doctrine, other feeling, other courses as to which there 
is no dispute. 

Finally, all this is but saying that false mysticism 
cannot but be false, since true mysticism is true. The 
pretense that the Spirit of God acts directly on passive 
human spirits is completely excluded by the fact that 
the Spirit of truth acts by ministering the truth. The 
truth is the tool, not now the product of his minis- 
try. He is not, so far as we have any reason to be- 
lieve, directly imparting any new revelation. He is 
using Christian truth by unfolding its inner meaning 
and impressing its many applications. The result may 
even be as striking as though mysticism were true. 
The old doctrine of justification by faith was as new to 
the age of Luther as though Luther had been the first 
apostle to know and announce it. The Christian ages, 
like Christian men, without new and immediate revela- 
tions, may grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus 
Christ.(2 Peter*3 : 18). 

The conclusions reached as to true and false mysti- 
‘cism have various applications, some of which must 
presently be noticed. The application to assurance of 
sonship is easy. 


(8) Valid Assurance 

It is not the question what are valid proofs of regen- 
eration, but what produces valid assurance of regenera- 
tion. To state those proofs would be far from doing 


264. THE HOLY SPIRIT 


justice to such sayings as “The Spirit itself beareth 
witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” 
and ‘Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of 
his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” Here 
we are listening to a verdict, not to an argument. 

It is presumable that gifts of the Spirit do not differ 
in other respects more than in this respect. If he qual)- 
fies for various offices, he affords as various approval. 
But there should be, and there are modes of imparting 
the spirit of adoption which are common to all believ- 
ers in all ages. At least two kinds of valid assurance 
are historic and supremely important. 


To the first of these John refers in the words, “ These 
things have I written to you who believe on the name 
of the Son of God, that ye may know that ye have eter- 
nal life’ (1 John 5: 13). It is God's own testimony 
at once to his Son and to our sonship. We hear his 
majestic acknowledgment of Christ and it is felt to be 
his gracious acknowledgment of us. ‘This is the tes- 
timony of God, that he has testified concerning his Son. 
He that believes on the Son of God has the testimony 
in himself. . . And this is the testimony, that God gave 
to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. . . And we 
know that the Son of God is come, and has given us 
understanding, that we may know the True One; and 
we are in the True One, in his Son Jesus Christ ”’ 
(1 John : 5: 9-11, 20). 

All this is thoroughly characteristic of John. To 
know the Son of God, to know him even through the 
senses first, by his indwelling afterward, and by con- 
scious life through belief in him, this is John’s special 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 205 


way of looking at the whole relation of Christ to Chris- 
tians. It is not a swiftly passing thought as to who 
Christ is, it is the abiding testimony of God. It is so 
peculiarly God’s awful voice that “he who believes not 
God has made him a liar” (ver. 10); while he who be- 
~ lieves in the Sonship of Christ believes in his own’ son- 
ship. This is the diuturnal voice of God to the church, 
and it is the highest and fittest assurance to individual 
believers. So transcendent a reality as the divine and 
sole Sonship of our Lord cannot be accepted as fully as 
John accepted it, and not carry with it the consequent 
reality of our human and joint sonship; an open-eyed 
faith in the divinity of our Lord has the assertiveness of 
a dogma and the vitality of an experience. To decry the 
dogma is as unhistorical as to deny the life. Neither is 
admissible for the Christian. If the divine Christ is a 
reality lived in us it will force itself into dogmatic defi- 
nition. Who could repress within himself the testimony 
of God to his Son without suppressing the testimony of 
God to his own adoption? And who could listen to the 
one but fail to hear the other? 

This grandest assurance, which identifies belief in 
Christ with belief in our own adoption, is at the utmost 
remove from a mystical feeling directly imparted by 
the Spirit of God. And as far as it is from a mere feel- 
ing so far is it superior to it. Sheer feeling that I am 
a child of God could bring no assurance whatever of 
its own truth. It might be only a mood of my own 
soul, or even a fancy sprung from bodily well-being. It 
might be a downright falsehood by the father of lies, 
Thousands on thousands of times it has been one or 
another of these. But assurance of the truth which 


266 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


God ministers concerning his Son is safe, and so is the 
assurance it brings that I too am God’s child. 


With the assurance of God’s Fatherhood is associated 
an equal assurance of the believers’ brotherhood. Not 
only do we ourselves “know that we have passed out of 
death into life because we love the brethren” (1 John 
3: 14), but “by this shall all men know that we are 
Christ’s disciples, if we have love one toward another ” 
(John 13 : 35). We may very well feel ashamed to 
gather that we love Christ only from the fact that we 
love the Christlike. Who would not love such men? 
But we are not now estimating evidences of the new 
birth ; we are considering what affords assurance of the 
new birth. It is strange, perhaps, to us that so lowly 
and instinctive a grace as brotherly love can have such 
value, but undeniably nothing awakens a more comfort- 
able confidence that we are of God’s household than to 
feel at home with his people. It is the surprising fact 
that brotherly love not only assures worldlings that we 
are not of the world, but it passes over to the world the 
Christian’s own secret assurance that Christ is from 
God. “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be 
made perfect in one ; and that the world may know that 
thou hast sent me” (John 17 : 23). Brotherly love is, 
after all, a radiant and a Christlike grace. There is no 
other which affords a clearer certainty that Christians 
are not like other men and that Christ is above all men. 
It grows directly out of the testimony which God has 
given concerning his Son and his household. So rare 
after all is this shining grace that its convincing energy 
may have to be imagined rather than observed. 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 267 


The second ground of assurance is moral. It is a 
manifestation of the indwelling Father and of Christ to 
the obedient. It was precisely in answer to Jude’s 
question how Christ would succeed in revealing himself 
to his disciples and not to the world. And he said, “ If 
a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father 
will love him, and we will come unto him, and make 
our abode with him” (John 14: 22, 23). Once more 
we must remind ourselves that we are not weighing 
proofs of the new birth, but studying the assurance 
that it has taken place. If our obedience is considered 
as evidence that we have been born again, who of us 
could regard his own evidence as complete? But to 
keep Christ’s words, to have his commandments and 
keep them (ver. 21) is so far a reality that the Father 
dwells with the Son in Christians and somehow makes 
them aware of his presence. He that loves Christ not 
keeps not his sayings (ver. 24). There is a difference, 
and difference enough to supply a corresponding degree 
of assurance. If one dare not claim that he keeps 
Christ’s commandments he knows at least that he has 
them and does not utterly disregard them. 

We have already noted in Chapter X. that the obe- 
dience of Christian lives is the most pertinent and per- 
suasive evidence which the world can receive that Christ 
is all that is claimed for him. The complete failure of 
his plans would be in effect as complete a refutation of 
his claims, while a measurable accomplishment of his 
purpose to overcome sin and bring in righteousness is 
in as large measure a vindication of Christ himself. 
That which assures the world reassures the disciple. 
A good conscience is a good witness, One is aware 


268 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


whether he is for God or against him. For all his 
shortcomings and transgressions the believer knows 
whether his heart is with the Lord’s host or enlisted 
against them. What is evidence to all the world ought 
to serve as assurance to the child of God. When we 
have made all allowance for traitors in the camp, for ill- 
disciplined, blundering, and fractious soldiers of Christ, 
the army is there; it knows where it is; it knows its 
Head ; it knows his orders, and makes its poor attempt 
to obey them. 


4, Equipment of the New Life 

Of all topics touching the new life this is the most 
eagerly and anxiously canvassed by the devout. Lie 
statement might be extended to all branches of the 
doctrine of the Holy Spirit. For many persons no 
other branch is so absorbing in interest as this. The 
equipment which, by common agreement, the new life 
may look for to the Holy Spirit, is private and untalked 
of ; that which the most of us regard as questionable or 
even dangerous is heralded loudly and published as 
widely as possible. From the ecstasy of the thorough- 
paced mystic to the diametrically opposed antinomian 
righteousness of Plymouth Brethren, from the Romish 
saint with his supererogatory merit to the Protestant 
perfectionist with his “ evangelical obedience,” and from 
the early Protestant perfectionist’s ingenuous but start- 
ling claim of sinlessness to the quiet but unquestioning 
“fullness”? of the present day Keswick disciple, every 
species of beatitude and every kind of process for attain- 
ing it has been set forth and as long as possible insisted 
on as respectively the utmost which the Holy Spirit 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 269 


does for the sanctified, and the surest approach to it, 
either with or without co-operation of the human will. 
For a somewhat detailed study of leading theories and — 
_ practices the author may be permitted to refer to his 
little book on “ The Highest Life,” and for a judicious 
consideration of the many New Testament phrases and 
figures the reader may consult Rev. W. E. Biederwolf’s 
modest volume already referred to, “A Help to the 
Study of the Holy Spirit.’ Every present purpose will 
be met by noticing the most important features of what 
is at present the only live movement in eccentric lines, 
the so-called “ Keswick movement.” 

This is chiefly remarkable as a reproduction in Prot- 
estant circles of a distinctively Roman Catholic phasis 
of sanctification, Like various monastic orders its dis- 
cipline proposes a series of graded approaches; like 
quietistic mysticism these approaches end in complete 
passivity of the will, the so-called “surrendered life,” 
and so in receptivity for an unmediated infilling of the 
Holy Spirit. | 

The most marked point of likeness to previous notions 
of Protestant sanctificationists is the most unfortunate 
perhaps of them all; namely, the fancy that those who 
have received “the blessing ” constitute a class apart, 
are as different in species from other Christians as 
among animals a new species would be, if it had been not 
evolved but specially created. A curious and decisive 
indication of this self-estimate is that no one is allowed 
to speak at the Keswick conferences unless he has ob- 
tained “the fullness.”’ All other Christians are but 
postulants, seeking initiation into a mystery, common- 
place disciples putting themselves in the way of a 


270 THE. HOLY. SPIRIT 


second and, this time, a sanctifying and specializing 
regeneration. | 

It is only natural to expect what is distinctly taught, 
that those who are singularly blessed are also corre- 
spondingly empowered. Being full of the Holy Spirit 
they have delightful exemption from sin, unruffled peace 
with God, and commanding authority over the hearts of 
men. The fullness of the Spirit is given all the credit, 
and to expect less from him would be to disparage the 
Spirit and disbelieve God. No success internal or ex- 
ternal is won by native vigor or capacity, neither is it 
excluded by native incapacity or weakness. One can- 
not but notice how composed and effortless are the public 
addresses of the Keswick leaders, at least in the presence 
of a congenial congregation. If their inner life is as far 
from self-buffettings and agonizings as their mastery of 
friendly assemblies, they have a happier lot by far than 
Paul’s, for whom “ without were fightings, within were 
fears” (2 Cor. 7:5), and who could not propose his own 
example to mature (“perfect”) Christians for more than 
this] press toward the mark” (Phil. 3 : 14, 15), “I 
follow Christ” (1 Cor. 11:1). One hears of devoted 
ministers too busy in the service of needy souls, to gain 
and keep for themselves the spiritual luxuries which 
more self-regarding saints enjoy. Possibly Paul was 
one of these, or would find himself so, if he lived in 
our day of fresh views, exigent openings, and multiform 
responsibilities. 

Without minute study of this latest and most genial 
form of Protestant mysticism, with its modest air and 
its winning ways, we may notice that two demerits be- 
long to its leading features. Those who partition off 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 271 


the new life into two parts, the first of which can never 
grow into the second, but is distinct from it as the new 
life from the old, if they look to the New Testament as’ 
the standard of Christian truth, ought to be staggered 
by its total silence on a point so important. That the 
regenerate are radically unlike the unregenerate is 
steadily and variously taught ; but that in the genus, 
new man, there are two species we nowhere read. 
There are varieties but not different species of Chris- 
tians. What the varieties, and whence they are, is not 
at this moment the question. We note here that all are 
children of one household. <“ There is neither Jew nor 
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is no male 
and female ; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3: 
28). And so goes the one offensive and entirely extra- 
scriptural pretension of these brethren. But though it 
is the most unlovely thing in the Keswick doctrine, I 
fear that for many it is the most attractive. I do not 
mean that some aspire so much to be unlike their 
brethren, but they long to be unlike themselves, 

The other radical error is not only unscriptural but 
psychologically and ethically indefensible. It is the 
mistake of believing that the Holy Spirit bestows his 
supreme gift, consummates all which can be done for 
the faithful, by filling them with superhuman energy 
while all their human functions and activities are in 
abeyance. This notion that suspension of human thought, 
feeling, volition, is the condition of an infusion of divine 
power is an extreme form of mysticism, barely stopping 
short of the ancient soothsayer’s or modern spiritualist’s 
trance. It is even at a disadvantage in such compari- 
son; for the diviner. while in a state of arrested men- 


272 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


tality, sometimes of suspended animation, offers his 
organism to the use of the invading spirit ; whereas the 
Christian devotee remains conscious, and thus presents 
the quite baffling anomaly—a human consciousness of 
an exclusively divine process. 

But the Bible in no case represents the infilling of 
the Spirit as an occurrence of this abnormal kind. Not 
even the cases of Balaam, or King Saul, or Pentecost, 
or Paul’s vision of Paradise, or John’s in the Apoca- 
lypse, exhibit this anomaly. In none of these cases was 
there first a voluntary passivity, secondly an impletion 
from without. 

Against it is not only its entirely extra-scriptural 
character, but its thofough irreconcilability with the 
laws of our mental and moral constitution. All our 
capacities are developed by normal use, not created by 
disuse. The lower may grow into surprisingly greater 
efficiency, but never provide through neglect for the 
origination of entirely new faculties. This difficulty is 
not met by alleging that regeneration is the origination 
of something new. It is nothing new which regeneration 
provides, except new direction of the affections and the 
momentous results which this rectification of our loves 
and likings brings in its train. Not even regeneration, 
with all the mystery and potency of it, can claim to be 
the impartation of occult powers. The Holy Spirit in 
regeneration sets our hearts right, and thus enables in- 
tellect and will to serve God and man. But the heart 
does not first put itself in a passive state, and then re- 
ceive regeneration as a pitcher accepts water at the 
fountain. Nothing in the history of our race goes to 
justify the position that intellectual ability or moral 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 273 


excellence begins, progresses, or is consummated by in- 
active submission to an extraneous force. 

The completest refutation of this singular conception | 
of an inert reception of spiritual power is the every- 
where assured fact that the Holy Spirit’s all-inclusive 
office on human souls is to minister the truth. But while 
this fact corrects the fundamental mistake of the Kes- 
wick movement, it also indicates the actual equipment 
of the new life. 


The new life requires to be variously equipped for its 
own advancement and for the discharge of its proper 
offices. All agree that we are to look to the Holy 
Spirit for these aids. Christ promised the constant in- 
dwelling of the Spirit, and also his special assistance 
upon occasion. All this has been fully discussed in pre- 
ceding chapters. No terms, however striking, such as 
unction, baptism, filling, sealing, can set aside by their 
obviously figurative suggestiveness the unequivocal and 
thoroughly established office of the Spirit to minister 
the truth to us and through us. The biblical student 
may find each one of these terms offering its own special 
glimpse of the Holy Spirit’s aid, for each is a fit figure ; 
but like the figures by which the beginning of the new 
life is set forth, these names for the development and 
activities of that life cannot be rationally construed as 
a violation of that life’s essential nature. 

If the truth is to be the instrument of the Holy 
Spirit it is indispensable to think. - How preposterous 
to expect devotion to objects to which we do not give 
our mind. How impossible to maintain love and loyalty 


to the unseen Father if we do not think about him. 
T 


274 HE HOLY SPIRIT 


And is it not impracticable to maintain more than 
uncertain fidelity by occasional reflection, with long 
lapses into thoughtlessness? Must we not dread any 
scheme, which by undertaking to make the Christian 
life all good in a twinkling, inevitably disparages the 
efficiency of habitual and ordinary devotional practices ? 
Again we ask what hope is there that the spiritual life 
can reach its best development on any other terms than 
those observed by the moral, mental, and even physical 
life? No one dreams of great bodily prowess, or of high 
intellectual successes, or lofty virtues, except through 
regular, intelligent, and persistent nourishment and ex- 
ercise. How can the Holy Spirit equip the new life 
except by means of the truth? Or how make the truth 
of service beyond the degree in which we think the 
truth? Indeed, is anything connected with the special 
measures taken by specialists in sanctification more ob- 
vious than that they begin at once to press their views 
of truth, and succeed in helping those who ask their 
guidance only to the extent that the minds of their 
spiritual clients are occupied with these views? 

In brief, if the Holy Spirit can do anything to pro- 
mote the vigor and the activities of the new life, it must 
be by ministering those ideas which are fitted to give 
right direction to our affections and to make us both 
energetic and wise in what we undertake. The ministry 
of the truth is possible for such only as think the truth. 


5. Outlook of the New Life 

« Now he who confirms us with you in Christ, and 
anointed us, is God; who also sealed us, and gave the 
earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (2 Cor. 1 : 21, 22). 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 205 


No loftier Christian teaching can be found than that 
concerning the future life and the security for it. This 
teaching is marked by breadth, by elevation, and by 
insight. It was a poor and narrow aspiration of pagan 
philosophers which could be contented with immortality 
of the soul. The New Testament can hardly be said to 
mention this. That man has an imperishable soul is 
taken for granted as the image of God in him. Pagan 
philosophy despised the body, but the body is as essen- 
tial to human completeness as the soul is. The dread 
of death is a normal shrinking from separation of what 
belong together. Neither apart from the other is less 
than an object of horror. Even the popular names for 
them are uncanny. A body without a soul is spoken of 
as a “corpse,” and a soul without a body we call a 
“ghost.” Of the two the disembodied spirit is the 
object of greater dread. Most people would rather 
meet with a dead body than be confronted by a living 
ghost. If familiarity relieves of all shrinking from dead 
bodies the man whose place it is to prepare them for 
decent burial, and if Spiritualists have outgrown abhor- 
rence of necromancy, neither the necessary business of 
the one nor the profane practices of the other can escape 
with right-minded persons the conviction of the ancient 
Hebrews that these occupations are either an unavoid- 
able defilement or an atrocious impiety. 

Paul was willing to “be absent from the body” in 
order to be “present with the Lord,” but even Paul 
desired “not to be unclothed but clothed upon” (2 Cor. 
5 : 1-8). Who wants to be a ghost? To be alive with- 
out a body is precisely what death is, and a bodiless 
immortality of the soul would be only an eternal death. 


276 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


It is therefore most wholesome and broad-minded in 
Christianity to include resurrection in its conception of 
eternal life. Nor ought we to allow any theoretical 
detail about the spiritual body to be accepted as equiva- 
lent to the promise of sucha body. The psychical— 
soulish, natural—body does not consist of psyche or 
soul, but is suited to the soul; so the spiritual body is ; 
not presumably to consist of spirit, but to be suited to 
the spirit and afforded by the indwelling Spirit of God. 


The Christian doctrine of life is lofty as it is wide. 
Holiness is essential to life and the Holy Spirit its fit- 
ting earnest. We are to remember that holiness is not an 
arbitrary or merely attachable quality for human souls. 
It is simply normality. It is to the moral nature what 
health is to the body. All viciousness, all departure 
from purity is moral disease. To make an indulgence 
out of it is as shocking as to make a luxury of a sore. The 
future must be either holy or unwholesome. The Chris- 
tian hopes to be free from all sinfulness and sinning. 

It is part of the same general conception of normal 
living that the social faculties shall be employed. Re- 
ligion itself is such an employment. It hardly required 
Paul’s assurance to satisfy us that love will abide and 
therefore have its objects. Solitariness forever would 
be an unendurable imprisonment even if the wide unt 
verse were its cell. 

But normal activity supplies happiness. Happiness 
visits us on no other terms. The wholeness and holi- 
ness of the future will naturally be a state of blessed- 
ness. Of this the Holy Spirit is doubly the pledge: it 
promises the holiness that will make us happy and it 


OFFICE TO BELIEVERS 277 


affords us at least a foretaste of that happiness now. 
In fact, the discomfort which the Spirit gives a disobe- 
dient Christian is a lesson and an assurance of how 
happiness is possible for him, Christ will one day have 
his own, and they will be happy with their Lord. No 
other conception of the future is so wide or so high. 


Such a conception is marked also by insight and accu- 
racy. This appears when we add to recognition of the 
nature of future life a recognition of the security for it. 
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead 
dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will 
make alive your mortal bodies also, because of his Spirit 
that dwells in you” (Rom. 8:11). That is to say, the 
life beyond the grave is not to be imparted from with- 
out ; it springs up from within. The indwelling Spirit 
is the life of the soul and will be the life of the body 
also. The resurrection is not so much a miracle; it is 
a manifestation. It was so with Christ; it will be so 
with those in whom the Spirit of Christ is at home. 

But the present possession of the Spirit of God could 
not be less than an earnest or part possession of the 
future life. How intelligible is the saying, “He that 
“hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who 
also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit” 
(2 Cor. 5:5). This may be thought of as a formal 
confirmation of a contract, a sealing. «Ye were sealed 
with the Holy Spirit of promise; who is an earnest of 
our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased 
possession” (Eph, 1 : 13, 14). It is as though at one 
and the same time God had consecrated us by an anoint- 
ing, made us sure for himself by a sealing, had himself 


278 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


paid part of the price, had handed over to us a part of 
the purchase, and all by bestowing the Holy Spirit. 

This is thoroughly characteristic of Christianity. If 
God makes any demands, he himself provides for meet- 
ing those demands; and what he is doing by the Holy 
Spirit is but to follow up what he did in Jesus Christ. 
It may well warn us that if we “have not the Spirit of 
Jesus Christ, we are none of his”; much more cheer us 
with an assurance that, “if Christ be in us, the Spirit 
is life because of righteousness ”’ (Rom. 8 : 9, I0). 


We have studied the offices of the Holy Spirit to the 
new life of the individual. But community of faith may 
very well bring with it community of interest. Co- 
operation might secure the ends for which Christ came, 
and the Spirit comes. There is one body where there is 
one Spirit ; one household, since there is one Head; 
one church, because there is one Christ. 


CHAPTER (XIV 
THE HOUSEHOLD 


HE church by the vast majority of Christians is 
ae made a mystery. Its members are believed to be 
in some inexplicable way so related as to constitute an 
organic whole which the Holy Spirit animates, as its 
members severally are not animated. Thus the church 
is invested with authority, authority over faith and over 
life, even authority from the King to allow or refuse 
admission to his kingdom. Such a doctrine grew up 
with conceptions of mystic efficiency in baptism and 
communion, and the authority claimed for the church 
was gradually centered in its officials. 

This general view of the church is dear to its officials. 
Many who would repudiate papal and prelatical rule over 
themselves, are tenacious of their own rule over churches. 
Even avowed congregationalism does not always disen- 
chant a pastor of his fancy for a pastoral dominance 
which finds no place in the congregational polity. Cus- 
tom too, has quietly established in voluntary associa- 
tions of churches the exercise of a control which inde- 
pendency avowedly forbids. The mystical theory of 
the church is dear also to the mystical-minded. Even 
brotherly love, and the relish for a spiritual ancestry, 
minister to the poetical thought of the church as a con- 
tinuous unit, a quasi-personality, which has endured from 
the apostles until to-day, and can never cease to be. 

If the question arises what scriptural authorization 

279 


280 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


can be found for such opinions, only inference from in- 
ference can be adduced, or at best texts diverted from 
their obviously intended meaning. Foregoing entirely 
all the familiar devices we may interpret the church by 
the indisputable office of the Spirit to minister the truth, 
and find this commandingly scriptural interpretation 
supported, as in the case of every other problem which 
it has unlocked for us, by the equally explicit and em- 
phatic testimony of experience 


1. Its Faith 

The promise that the Holy Spirit would guide into 
all the truth was given to the company of the apostles. 
Did we find any reason, in studying that promise 
(Chapter XI.) for thinking that it was given to the apos- 
tles as officials rather than as persons, or to them jointly 
instead of singly? The truth is needed by all alike, is 
pertinent to all alike and, unless for extraordinary rea- 
sons to the contrary, must. be regarded as ministered 
alike to all. The result shows it. 

The result is an intimate relation between truth and 
life. So obviously are lives shaped by doctrines that 
according to common observation the adherents of each 
important and long existent Christian denomination 
exhibit types of character conformable to the teach- 
ings with which they have long been familiar. The 
placid Quaker faces are as noticeable as the demure 
Quaker hats and bonnets. It is less observed, but 
is equally true, that native differences of character 
tend to differences of Christian experience, and these 
to correspondent types of doctrine. Such facts illus- 
trate the actual ministration of truth to groups of minds. 


THE HOUSEHOLD 281 


The type of character which results, and the inborn type 
which predisposes or excludes, as the case may be, 
ought to satisfy every thoughtful observer that, if the 
Holy Spirit ministers the truth, he ministers it not to 
a few church officers, but to spiritual-minded church- 
members, one and all. 

The wide extension of the Spirit’s office has a still 
more remarkable illustration. It amounts to a histori- 
cal demonstration. It is a fact which grows fairly 
amazing when fully recognized. This fact is the pro- 
digiously slow rate at which essential Christian truths 
come to light and gain general acceptance. The apos- 
tolic writings underlie the whole field, and occupy it so 
well that later generations thus far have had only to dig 
in those ancient mines, and work over their rich ore. 
Yet it has required the lapse of centuries to gain atten- 
tion for one or another doctrine of capital importance. 
Some pre-eminent soul may discern the truth, but the 
church will not. Nineteen centuries ago the fullness of 
times had come for the fullness of revelation in Christ ; 
but afterward for the apprehension, one after another, of 
his great teachings, the full time did not arrive until 
Christian experience, by its slow process of digestion, had 
assimilated one truth, and become hungry for the next. 

We can thus see how it became a demand not only 
of speculative reason but of reasonable faith that, if 
Jesus Christ was to be accepted as Saviour, some trust- 
worthy conclusion should be reached as to who and 
what he was. It took three hundred years to settle it 
that he was divine in a sense definable and defensible, 
although the Spirit of God never ceased during those 
centuries to testify to spiritual men that Christ was the 


282 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


Son of God and they the children of God; so slow are 
we to learn what we are unremittingly taught. When 
at length the Redeemer’s divinity had been formally 
declared the formidableness of the evil which he under- 
took to deliver men from would challenge notice. And 
so the hundred years which followed Athanasius pro- 
duced an Augustine, and by consensus of the Holy 
Spirit with the consciences of men the doctrine that it 
is natural for man to sin was virtually settled forall time. 

Eight hundred years now elapse, during which certain 
collateral issues were decided and no small attention 
given to developing and establishing the papal doctrine 
of the church and its sacraments. But at the beginning 
of the twelfth century the remarkable intellectual activ- 
ity of scholasticism awoke in the pious soul of Anselm 
with his exposition of the atonement. At length men 
had begun to ask to some purpose why Christ died. 
Why Christ died? This was the good news, but it 
had taken eleven hundred years to elicit a hopeful an- 
swer to the question what the good news meant. Great 
thinkers thereupon wrought the answer over and over. 
They defined it and drew inferences from it, each in 
his peculiar way. They cried up Christ’s merits, dis- 
puted about man’s, and made everything turn to account 
of the church. It took another four hundred years to 
combine priestly rule and scholastic theology into a 
tyranny so grievous that once more Christ had to call 
the heavy-laden to himself. And he did it. As though 
it were an unheard-of message from heaven, Luther lis- 
tened for his life, and then spoke to his generation. 
Thus at last, after fifteen hundred years, was the gospel 
applied. The Holy Spirit led Luther through a relig- 


THE HOUSEHOLD 283 


ious experience which in essentials repeated that of Paul, 
and the consciousness of a great Christian rose like a 
great light upon the consciousness of a perplexed, ener- 
getic, and deeply religious age. 

In those great days one could not have expected that 
the doctrine of justification by faith, “the article of a 
standing or a falling church,” would by and by harden 
into the lifeless orthodoxy of the continent, the free and 
easy morality of England, and in all regions both sides 
the sea where Protestantism prevailed afford the con- 
genial soil of decay to every fungus of heresy and infi- 
delity. But this occurred, and the hearts that kept the 
faith were once again led by the Holy Spirit into a prac- 
tically new truth to awaken the nations withal. This 
was the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as popularly preached 
in England by the Wesleys and taught in mystical form 
among the learned by the Pietists in Germany. 

In every age it has been a consciousness of need 
which has prepared men for a consciousness of help. 
Plainly the Spirit of God waited long for his opportu- 
nity and seized it when the church at large would listen 
to his instructions. Christ has to be reinterpreted to 
every age if not to every generation, and it is the broth- 
erhood of believers, not clerics nor councils nor popes, 
who know their Lord under every fresh guise. The 
voice of the Spirit has proved to be a voice for all. 

Now and then we may find an illustration of the same 
fact even in public affairs. The Holy Spirit so clearly 
taught in Luther’s day, and it was so stoutly maintained 
by Luther himself, that every child of God had the 
right and the duty of interpreting the Bible for himself 
as to seem a guaranty of universal liberty so to do. 


284 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


But the consciousness of Christians did not as yet lay 
hold of this so logical conclusion, did not do so even in 
the colonies of the New World. It was not until 1791, 
a century and a half after Roger Williams had settled 
in Rhode Island, if that uneasy spirit may be said to 
‘have settled anywhere, that religious liberty was recog- 
nized by constitutional amendment as a religious doc- 
trine of American politics. Not all Christendom believes 
in it yet. The spirit of liberty has not won a universal 
hearing. Many honest disciples are still to be led into 
this truth. 


It is evident that what the Spirit of God has yet to 
do for guidance of the church into truth must be done 
in harmony with the strangely slow working of “the 
common mass of human minds,” and equally that the 
teaching which the Spirit gave in such fullness at the 
establishment of Christianity can become available to 
later ages only by the activity of the same Messenger 
who first took the things of Christ and showed them 
unto men. Is it, then, the purpose of Him who poured 
out his Spirit on all flesh and made even servants and 
handmaids prophets, to withdraw the Spirit after the 
first pentecostal day of this looked-for age? He gave 
them “an unction from the Holy One, that they might 
know all things.” Does not the anointing received of 
him still abide? Do we, as they did not, “need that a 
man teach us”? Or may we accept for ourselves that 
anointing of the Spirit which is truth and no lie, and 
the church of our day, like the first few disciples, abide 
in shiny .4(L.fobhne2):;20).27.) 

If since that wonderful first age we are not taught 


THE HOUSEHOLD 285 


“all things”’ at once but only one thing at a time, and 
are along while in learning this one thing, that which 
we learn by experience we at least learn by heart; and. 
while the fullness of the early faith, because it had not 
the tutelage of general experience behind it, like the 
innocence of Adam, was soon despoiled, it has. not 
been possible for general defection to go far after the 
Holy Spirit has taught the church the great Christian 
truths in turn. It required centuries in each case to 
complete the preparations, but the day for whose rising 
centuries prepared has never again passed into thick 
night. Such rare days of illumination have been like 
the eternal day of God. When the sun shall arise at 
last upon that day it shall rise to know no setting. The 
church even now is anxiously waiting to learn whether 
God has a special message for our times. If he has, we 
may be sure that the Spirit of God will not whisper it 
in the ear of the good pope alone who now sits author- 
ized to listen and to speak, nor will trumpet it loud to 
a council of the world’s bishops, but will lead the church 
at large to see it without proving, as it sees for itself 
and needs no demonstration that the sun has risen. 
Nothing is so convincingly settled as that which history 
settles, and history has shown that the Holy Spirit 
guides effectually when he guides all Christians into 
knowledge of Christian truth. 


Unhappy effects are produced on the faith of the 
church by regarding it as a mystical body for which 
the Holy Spirit does what he cannot undertake for in- 
dividual believers. A mystical body must have a mys- 
tical voice. To find such a voice it must have mysti- 


286 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


cally endowed leaders. To hold that the Holy Spirit 
leads the mystical person, the church, into the truth as 
believing persons are not led, would of itself involve a 
scheme of sacerdotalism. Such a requirement nat- 
urally enforces next the need of a sacerdotal order duly 
equipped to administer mystic sacraments. 

Officials who alone can give voice to the Holy Spirit’s 
teaching at once take lordship over faith. We have 
seen that the agreement, and it is a slowly enlarging 
agreement of all who study the Bible, and of all who 
have a Christian experience to study, cannot be at fault 
concerning what the Bible or experience teaches. A 
mistake in the consensus would mean that every one 
mistakes the Bible’s doctrine and every one is misled 
by the inner life. Yet the official voice of the church, 
while it pretends to declare the consensus, does not 
utter the convictions of unofficial believers. It abhors 
and silences the voice of the multitude. The official 
voices, therefore, may fall short of the common faith 
and in important particulars far outrun and even violate 
that faith. Witness the vast accumulation of Roman 
Catholic dogmas from the earliest attempts at a meta- 
physic of the Trinity to the decrees of immaculate con- 
ception and papal infallibility. 

Not only is the faith perverted and overloaded, but 
the official correction of errors becomes next to impos- 
sible and the normal enlargement of doctrine is greatly 
impeded. The dark history of persecution is but the 
final story of the mischief wrought by the doctrine that 
truth is afforded by the Holy Spirit to a mystically en- 
dowed organization. If this doctrine is true, its effect 
on the faith of the church is disastrous, and when 


THE HOUSEHOLD 287 


contrasted with the unofficial and ever-progressive con- 
sensus of believers is seen to be exclusively disastrous. 
A false method prevents a true method of advance in 
the understanding of the Christian verities. 


2. Its Work 


Quite as unfortunate are the effects of the mystical 
theory on the church’s work. If the church is a 
mystical body especially endued by the Holy Spirit, 
churches cannot be voluntarily organized. An attempt 
at such organization, whatever the need, would be a sac- 
rilegious Uzzah’s touch of the ark. Validity must come 
through exclusive channels, and ecclesiastical invalidity 
is ecclesiastical impiety. If such a restraint on the 
church’s growth is not superstitious, it has the unhappy 
characteristics and results of superstition. 

It follows at once that the sacraments are vehicles of 
grace, the chief vehicles for a mystic grace which is the 
choicest grace. But Christians must forego the sacra- 
ments and their grace, unless from hands made fit by 
the touch of fitted hands in unbroken recession to the 
apostles. Where is the Scripture, or where the experi- 
ence for a claim, which may perhaps be best described 
by calling it queer? Corresponding restraint is put 
on Christian enterprise. Objection to it is spontaneous 
and generally insuperable. It is felt that in a mystic 
body, with mystic efficiency, only the mystically sanc- 
tioned hand should be put tothe work. The resistance 
of the English Church to Wesleyanism is matched by 
as general antagonism of American Episcopalians to 
revivals. How lamentable that these noteworthy and 
exceptional visitations of the Holy Spirit to the world 


288 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


itself should to so small extent secure the discreet and 
seemly co-operation of the Episcopalian clergy. 

But reliance upon an inexplicable and unrecogniza- 
ble aid of the Holy Spirit involves as its greatest draw- 
back neglect of the enormous efficiency provided for 
in the social faculties. Human society has incalcu-, 
lable power over persons. When we seek historical in- 
stances most minds run back to well-known illustrations 
of a malign influence in society. We recall those periods 
when French high life had no reprobation for half-con- 
cealed unfaithfulness to the marriage tie, and not even 
hypocrisy “rendered homage to virtue.” Or we gaze 
with amazement at the brutal spectacle of national 
hatreds and at race antagonisms, sanctioning and even 
insisting on public outrage. Or we turn with disgust 
from the low standards of political morality, which allow 
the officials of a city or State to make the discharge of 
their functions tributary, in the face of the world, to the 
enrichments of “ bosses” and “rings,” and even fill the 
official breast with resentment against the helpless pro- 
tests of upright citizens. It is the power of society for 
evil which thrusts itself on our notice. 

But the power of society over the individual is not 
alone for evil. Now and then we notice its vigor for 
good. Indeed we live in its constant protection. Public 
sentiment is in most matters unequivocally for decency 
and right. It wraps us around like an atmosphere. 
We breathe it and are pervaded by it. It habitually 
supports the loyal and brave if they figure at a sufficient 
remove from local concerns. The elder generation can 
never forget the sodden and shameful depression which 
the whole people of the United States felt in the months 


THE HOUSEHOLD 289 


immediately preceding the outbreak of civil war. In 
North and South alike the indecision and dismay were 
pitiful and painful, if not disgraceful. But with the 
sound of the first gun at Fort Sumter how sudden a 
transformation. North and South awoke, leaped to 
their feet, knew at once what they wanted and what 
they would do. The moral revolution was complete 
and sublime. Men who would have hidden from a pistol 
pointed their way at any distance from which it could 
be seen, hastened to face the musketry, the batteries, 
the charging squadrons of the bloodiest battlefields in 
modern history. It was the noble spectacle of public 
conscience stimulating private conscience. And then it 
was the conscience of the regiment, the brigade, the 
division, the corps, the army which led the soldier up 
to death. How is it possible to overstate the energy of 
the social faculties? and how can one think with com- 
placency of a theory about the church, unintimated in 
Scripture, unsupported by experience, which entirely 
commits the service of the church for mankind to al- 
leged occult relations of the Holy Spirit, and leaves 
unenlisted, untrained, unregarded the mighty enginery 
of the social powers in man? What a transformation 
if those powers were fully employed. What limitless 
capacity for conquest would the churches put at the 
disposal of the Holy Spirit if men’s capacity for orderly 
warfare were disciplined and put at command of the 
Captain of our salvation. Is it necessary to give over 
the great resource to the eccentric and questionable 
practices of salvationists and Jesuits? Or may we 
expect in this present age of unfettered enterprise and 


free organization that the men who embody and can 
U 


290 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


lead the spirit of our day will find out by and by how 
to make of the Brotherhood a labor union? Would 
not the Holy Spirit once more prove the level fitness of 
Christian faith and life to every age? If to any degree 
this comes about, the result of the Holy Spirit's co- 
action with spiritual men, in normal and intelligible 
ways, will surely put to the blush all the hampered and 
hampering efforts thus far made under sway of the doc- 
trine which remands the whole possibility to the mystic 
operations of the Spirit through a mystical union. It 
is not to belittle but to magnify the work of the Holy 
Spirit in the church that it is here sought to translate 
it from enigma into life. 

No other religious use of the social faculties is so 
striking as revivals. It would be worth knowing how 
large part of church-members were thus gathered. It 
might prove startlingly large—startlingly, because many 
are saying that no more great revivals can be hoped for. 
The late D. L. Moody found that the people would no 
longer rally at his call—perhaps because he had ceased 
to call the people, and preferred to summon church-mem- 
bers to better living. But revivals are not rare in our 
Southern States. They follow Torrey and Alexander in 
old England as well as in new Australia. To lack revi- 
vals would be to lack the mightiest social enginery. It 
would be to miss that which made the great age of the 
Reformation, of the Wesleyan awakening, and of the 
nineteenth century American revivals pre-eminent in the 
history of the church. The church can no more spare re- 
vivals than politics can spare its wordy campaigns, or 
nations use only skirmishers in war. 


CHAPTER XV 
THE GUIDE-BOOK 


HE long familiar method of making out the in- 
ap spiration and authority of the Scriptures is first 
to prove their date, their writers, their truthfulness, and 
then to ask what they say for themselves. The method 
is legitimate and will never be outgrown ; there will 
always be a biblical doctrine of the Bible, but the so 
familiar method has certain disadvantages, 


1. Defects of a Test 
(1) View from Without 

That method takes up the matter from without, as a 
heathen might, or as a Christian would try the inspira- 
tion of the Koran or the Book of Mormon. The Bible 
may be able to bear this sort of investigation, but it is 
unfair. At least it may well seem so to a believer in 
the Bible. Decidedly it is not the method which the 
Book itself suggests. The Scriptures do not isolate 
themselves. They do not claim to be the product of a 
life in which their reader has no share. On the con- 
trary, they continually appeal to a spiritual life shared 
by the reader and uttered for him. In fact it is only 
by a study from within that we can determine how far 
the Scriptures are the product of spiritual gifts outside 
common experience. Only by recognizing to what ex- 
tent they are the voice of the Spirit who dwells in every 


believer and speaks to every believer, can it be certified 
291 


292 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


that he has entrusted a message to a special messenger 
and that the Bible is a record of such messages. 


(2) Authority Unsettled 

If the special inspiration of the biblical writers is 
admitted this has not settled the question of their 
authority. It raises that question. One has to ask 
how far special inspiration extends. Does it@cover-all 
the thoughts of an inspired man on a theme with which 
the inspiration deals? Does he draw no inferences of 
his own? Does he distinguish thoughts all his own, or 
partly his own, from thoughts wholly inspired? It is 
plain that every man thinks along lines determined in 
part by the thought of hisday. Every important writer 
of holy Scripture shows this. Even at his loftiest his 
own personal characteristics appear. Isaiah is never so 
unmistakably Isaiah, nor Paul so pre-eminently Paul as 
when the prophet and the apostle are borne by the Holy 
Spirit to the greatest heights. No one is like either 
when each owes most to inspiration. It is quite clear 
that inspiration is not in itself inerrancy. If inspiration 
were mechanical, then only would it needs be inerrant. 

To be sure, it could not be accepted as of absolute 
authority, unless its source were known to be from out- 
side its writers ; but no extraneous authority can give a 
felt assurance of its own existence. It must be met by 
a recognition which is a submission on the part of read- 
ers in whose breast the Spirit dwells. The Spirit within 
us knows the voice of the Spirit that addresses us. We 
may even explain that the truth already experienced 
finds the new truth congruous, complemental, and com- 
pleting. In the progress of doctrine exhibited by the 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 293 


sacred books nothing is more marked than the prepara- 
tion by earlier truth for later truth. | 
The show of formal authority may even impair the 
sense of real authority. It is certainly the case with 
many minds at present. For them the process needs to 
be reversed. The felt divinity of the message might 
welcome a claim of divinity, but to begin with the pre- 
tense of a sign is to invite skepticism. And so the 
familiar method of proving that God is in the Book by 
approaching the innermost shrine of truth from without, 
is never in our day privileged to see the Shekinah, never 
knows absolutely that this is where God dwells, and may 
even be struck with astonishment, as presumptuous 
Pompey was, to find the Holy of Holies empty. 


(3) Evidence Meagre 

Such a method is also confronted by the very un- 
equal testimony of Scripture itself as to various offices 
of inspiration. That these offices are strikingly unlike 
it is impossible to deny. Foremost is revelation of 
truth. Jesus is set forth as the full revelation of God. 
All say it. Paul claims to have received his gospel by 
the revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal. caps. 1 and 2). 
‘Another fruit of inspiration is insight or understanding 
of spiritual things. This too is amply claimed, and 
again pre-eminently by Paul (I Cor. caps.teand 2). 
Both these offices would be admitted by all who call 
themselves Christians, and in some sense by many who 
repudiate the name. The issue among believers is not 
as to knowledge, but as to telling what is known. Did 
inspiration aid utterance? Is there a third office of 
this kind? Every phase of opinion on this point has 


294 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


been advocated, from the theory of verbal dictation to 
a mere recognition that any help to think truly is neces- 
sarily a help to speak correctly. Yet if we look for di- 
rect evidence that the Holy Spirit aided the writers of 
the New Testament, there is but a single claim on their 
part to this effect, the statement of Paul, ‘‘ Which 
things also we speak, not in the words which man’s 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth ” 
(1 Cor. 2:13). The term for “words” (Aoyocg) does 
not mean mere vocables, but in a large way utterance. 
The fact that such a claim is made but once must imply 
that the issue has not such intrinsic importance as con- 
troversy gives it. If special aid were altogether want- 
ing, still we might accept the writers of Scripture as 
witnesses competent in knowledge, in honesty, and in 
ability to say what they know. We might even recog- 
nize that, in common with many writers and preachers 
since that day, they enjoyed a divinely imparted gift of 
using the mother tongue. So far, then, is careful scru- 
tiny of the Spirit’s offices from establishing a claim by 
the New Testament itself to exclusive inspiration in the 
sense with which controversy has been busy. 


(4) Problem of Criticism 

But the situation peculiar to our own day raises the 
most formidable objection to sole dependence on the 
familiar method for confirming the authority of Scrip- 
ture. Modern criticism challenges either the author- 
ship or the trustworthiness of every book in the New 
Testament ; and if criticism overturns faith in the New 
Testament, faith in the elder Scriptures must still more 
rapidly decline. The familiar method began with ac- 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 295 


cepting the books of the New Testament as genuine 
and veracious ; criticism too begins at the beginning 
with its denials. It is not necessary to assume that the 
answer of hostile criticism is true. There is sufficient 
reason for believing that it is untrue. But while schol- 
arship debates literary issues, has faith no sure footing ? 
Must trust in Jesus Christ, and must the practice of all 
Christian rules and rites be suspended by every candid 
man until the points in dispute are settled beyond ap- 
peal? It would have to be so if faith in the Bible de- 
pended upon external evidences. 


2. A Convincing Test 

The best evidence for Christianity is the Christian, 
and the best evidence for inspiration is the truth which 
has formed the Christian. It would be impossible to 
gainsay either a sufficiency or a defect of evidence at 
this point. The conclusive testimony to Christ we 
found to be the accomplishment of his mission. for 
men, and correspondingly, the conclusive testimony to 
the Holy Spirit is the teachings which were the means 
of achieving in men the mission of Christ. The era of 
inesaolyopirit. 1s thevera of: Christ.» 1t-is the truth 
which makes men free. Christ is the truth, and the 
Spirit is the minister of the truth. 

If, then, we trace the ministration of Christian truth 
in the implanting and growth of the Christian, we are 
following the surest, the only irrefutable evidence to 
Christ or to inspiration. But this it is quite possible to 
do. Thus is established in the highest degree the au- 
thority of the New Testament’s contents, irrespective 
of all questions mooted, and so far left unsettled by 


296 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


-modern criticism. There will be a modus vivendi for 
faith so long as these questions remain open. 


New Testament Idea of a Christian 


The mission of our Lord was not abruptly declared. 
It unfolded itself but gradually to his own conscious- 
ness as some think, to the minds of his followers as all 
agree. The share of the Holy Spirit in unfolding his 
mission could be best understood if this development 
were traced in detail. No such detail, however, is 
needed for the present purpose. The general character 
of the process by which his purposes came to light was 
abundantly advertised by the conduct of his adherents, 
and even of the populace. The sick were cured; the deaf 
and blind restored; men harried by demons were set 
free; hungry, they were fed at no pains to themselves, at 
no cost to him, or they were only wonder-mongering and 
full of debate about what they had seen. Could Jesus be 
made king, such a provider would please them. Even 
his intimates did not escape the influence of the popular 
prepossessions. His own kindred, not yet believing in 
him, challenged him to meet the general wishes. “Tell 
these things,” said he, “to John”; for John had de- 
manded of him, ‘‘ Do we look for another ?”’ The outer 
circle came and went. Every new revelation of his 
aims attracted perhaps some stranger, or more often re- 
pelled some adherent. Even to his own mind it was a 
question whether the inner circle would break up before 
the final treason; whether those who knew him best, 
loved him most, and bore his commission, would also 
go away. In the midst of this tohu bohu we may dis- 
cern the development of the New Testament’s idea as 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 297 


to what constituted a Christian. This idea will be the 
exponent of the developing idea of the Messiah’s mis- 
sion and of the conquering office of the Holy Spirit. 


At first all his followers regarded him as the future 
King of Israel. He himself took up the announcement 
of John (Matt. 4:17). As late as the time of his third 
tour through Galilee he sent forth the Twelve in pairs 
to canvass, as we would say, the distressed and shep- 
herdless multitude, with power to heal diseases and cast 
out unclean spirits ; but still the message with which to 
arouse and gladden the people was, “The kingdom of 
heaven is at hand” (Matt. 10: 7). Christ was himself 
to be the King. At least they hoped so. 

But if it was his place to be king, what was that of 
the Twelve, unless to be high functionaries over the 
many subjects of his kingdom? This persuasion lasted 
long. That some time there was to be a temporal 
kingdom, and that if it soon arrived it would have pe- 
, culiar importance for their ambitions—ideas like these 
outlived the first Easter and came out in their ques- 
tions, although the Master had just been trying to turn 
their thoughts toward the approaching and _ revolution- 
izing baptism of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1 : 4-8). While 
Christ walked among men the Twelve never tired of de- 
bating which of them should be greatest ; and once ten 
of them were not unjustly indignant because the mother 
of Zebedee’s children attempted, as late as the last 
sorrowful journey to Jerusalem, to be beforehand with 
the rest, and to secure a pledge of the highest honors 
for James and John. Had not the Holy Spirit revolu- 
tionized the dispensation, it would once again have been 


298 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


quite fruitlessly that Christ promised to the politic 
brothers nothing more than a share in his awful bap- 
tism (Matt. 20 : 20-28), or laid it on the jealous ten 
that the chiefest among them would be one who was 
servant of all. 

The idea as to Christ, his kingdom, and its subjects, ° 
ingrained by the hopes of centuries and constantly re- 
appearing during the ministry of our Lord on earth, 
was more than half secular if not downright worldly. 
The Christ of the new era was identified with the Mes- 
siah of old Jewish hopes; while such a misinterpretation 
of his mission made his followers at the first to be no 
more than a kind of Messiah-ites—if so horrible a name 
may be coined for so bad a thing. In order to begin 
being Christians they had much to learn. 

Since the Lord refused to be such a Messiah as they 
wished him to be, the question arose what sort of Mes- 
siah he was willing to be. If he would not enter into 
plans ready-made for him, what were his plans? This 
attitude of inquiry made of him a teacher, and those 
who adhered to him became learners. Accordingly, in 
the Gospels they are habitually spoken of as “disciples,” 
and him they call “ Master,” that is, Instructor. The 
relation of teacher and taught continued while Christ 
remained on earth. The Gospels claim to bea record 
of his teaching about himself, about his mission, and 
about the life which, as in the Sermon on the Mount, 
he proposed for his followers. How authoritative that 
teaching, was remarked at once with astonishment (Matt. 
7 : 28, 29), and is felt, with recognition that it was a 
revelation, unto this day. 

Traditional faith is, however, taken up with the 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 299 


priestly functions of Christ, although these recur but 
scantily in the narrative books of the New Testament, 
while the figure of the divine Prophet or Teacher fills’ 
almost the entire scene. For this office there was con- 
stant and exigent need. How much John said about 
it we have noticed more than once. The most winsome 
invitation that he ever uttered, one which is recognized 
to be likest of all passages in the synoptists to the Gos- 
pel according to John, is precisely an invitation to find 
rest by learning of him (Matt. 11 : 27-30). If any one 
could then, or can now, accept Jesus as a teacher, he is 
a disciple, and may keep the Master’s company like the 
Twelve. In due season he shall be taught all he needs 
to know. To be a Christian, according to the four 
Gospels, was to be a learner from Christ, and it was his 
confessedly divine teaching which thus comes to light. 
By a long but easy stride we move from the Gospels to 
_the position of the book of Acts. 


Naturally the crucifixion, resurrection, recurring epiph- 
anies, and final ascension, all coming in swift succession, 
left the disciples in wonderment, and in sore need that 
their exalted Lord should still be their teacher. But 
he had made his last appearance and offered his final 
explanation. What was he now, and what were they? 
Earlier he had foretold that he must be put to death, 
that he must give himself as a ransom, and that re- 
mission of sins was to be in his blood; but it did 
not occur to their minds, no one can say for how long 
time, that these predictions had found their fulfillment 
on-the cross. The earlier discourses in the Acts do 
not once speak of the crucifixion as a sacrifice, but 


300 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


always as an outrage. That cruel instrument of death 
was not a Moses’ rod, which might do wonders for the 
people’s redemption; it was something that pricked 
their hearts. Peter accused their wicked hands of slay- 
ing a man approved of God among them; but whom 
‘God had exalted. The one thing left for them to do 
was to repent and be baptized for the remission of 
their sins (Acts 2 : 22-38). Let us remark again how 
noteworthy a mark it is of historical trustworthiness in 
the Acts that the minds of the disciples do not at first 
look on the crucifixion as in any way expiatory, or as 
aught else than an awful outbreak of Jewish bigotry 
and human wickedness. As events progressed so pro- 
gressed the revelation of truth, and as truth progressed 
so progressed the idea of a Christian. Historically, 
psychologically, and theologically, the book of the Acts 
is progressive and true. 

The Messianic idea had never died out; now it re- 
vived, and seasonably. God had enthroned his Son, 
and if the people will repent, the Son shall be sent again 
to restore all things (Acts 3: 13, 19-21). Presently 
Peter is ready to announce in set terms that Jesus has 
been exalted to be “a Prince and a Saviour,” though so 
far in behalf of Israel only (Acts 5: 31). Jesus was 
now the head of a heavenly kingdom which waited 
to become an earthly kingdom too. Christians were 
spiritual subjects, still with secular hopes. But Jesus 
was King, whether in heaven or on earth, and his fol- 
lowers were enlisted for the Messiah. We note their 
high confidence, their perfect courage, their untiring 
enterprise. They are Christians now, indeed, as to the 
stronger and aggressive elements of Christian character. 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 301 


So far they are worthy of Christ. What made them so? 
A few of them had seen the Lord alive after his cruci- 
fixion and witnessed his return to the skies. But the 
greater part of them accepted this supreme fact on the 
testimony of the Spirit. It was distinctly the witness 
of God to his Son, a revelation worthy of its theme and 
indispensable to its purpose. 

Presently faith in the Messiah of the Jews was en- 
larged to faith in the Christ of all men. It was granted 
to Peter, as he was always glad to recall, to be not only 
the foremost apostle of the circumcision, but the first 
apostle to the Gentiles (Acts, caps. 10 and Bt) owt itis 
gave to Christianity its note of universality, without 
which it would have been an incongruous and incom- 
prehensible scheme of ideas; and this made a Christian 
the lover of his race, without which ruling sentiment 
he could have been hardly other than an antichrist. 
Yet this immense rectification and enlargement could 
have been accomplished only as it was accomplished, by 
the special teaching of the Spirit of God. If any Chris- 
tian doctrine commends itself as inspired, both by its 
intrinsic nature and by its effect on Christians, it is this 
familiar doctrine that Christ is for us all. 

Thus far the unfolding of truth and the development 
of character had the quality of extension; it remained 
to give to it intension. The aims of Christianity could 
never be wider, for they were wide now as the human 
race. But what did they propose for every man? How, 
to begin with, did they place a man before his Maker ? 
It fell to Paul to announce that a right standing with 
God is possible, that there is “justification by faith 
from all things from which we could not be justified 


302 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


by the law of Moses” (Acts 13 : 39). It does not yet 
appear that the ground of justification was either a vica- 
rious sacrifice or a representative resurrection, or both. 
Nothing to such effect is said as yet by Paul, so far as 
the book of Acts reports him, except when he meets 
the Ephesian elders at Miletus (20 : 28). Of course, 
we do not know that he was silent on all that the report 
is silent on. But we do know that the Christian, to the 
mind of Paul, was not only the subject of Messiah’s 
kingdom, but a forgiven sinner, accepted as a friend. 

All will recognize this as the first step toward the 
intensification and spiritualization of the idea of the 
Christian. Every soul has his standing before God ; 
Christ provided for peace with God. This was a wholly 
new gift to religion. It is universally recognized as the 
Pauline theology, and produced Pauline Christians. Or 
if it was not thought of now for quite the first time that 
a sinner might be forgiven, it was for the first time an- 
nounced that all sinners may be justified. We now 
also for the first time recognize a Christian of the his- 
toric type. Inspiration supplied the type and maintains 
it. A Christian was now a transgressor justified. 

But so far as we know it also fell to Paul to announce 
that Jesus became a Saviour by being a sacrifice. This 
is the doctrine of the four great Pauline Epistles which 
come first in our English Bibles, and was equally the 
teaching of Peter and John. But as Christ is the Sav- 
iour, so Christians are the saved. Christian history 
knows no other kind of Christian, and Christian history 
is neither to be swept aside nor toyed with. Christ died 
for our salvation. To believe this has made us Chris- 
tians, and the Holy Spirit inspires that belief. 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 303 


The vulgar notion as to what salvation is, although 
much protested against and not at all a complete pre- 
sentation of the case, is not, after all, either unscriptural 
or in any other way positively at fault. It is negatively 
objectionable, if accepted as a complete account of the 
good news. To be “saved,” as popularly understood, 
is to be secured against a danger threatened, rather 
than to be delivered from an evil endured. As to sin, 
to be saved is primarily to be safeguarded against its 
consequences, rather than freed from its practice. 

This will be denounced as an unworthy view, as a de- 
grading mistake, whether on the part of the Bible or on 
the part of popular theology. Let us, then, admit that 
the idea is pernicious, and still it remains the actual 
meaning of terms. If it isa mistake, it is to begin with, 
the Bible’s mistake. Even when 70 de saved means to 
be cured of a disease the disease is regarded as threaten- 
ing a graver evil than it is in itself. This too is the 
ordinary way of looking at serious disease the world 
over; it is a peril threatened rather than an injury 
suffered. The question always is, must the patient 
succumb? As to passages about spiritual salvation 
attentive reading will supply confirmation of what has 
just been said. These passages look forward. They 
speak of deliverance provided by Christ from the future 
death that sin earns. Even the interpretation of the 
name Jesus, “he shall save his people from their sins” 
(Matt. 1 : 21), contemplates sin not as a ruin but as 
ruinous, precisely as is the case with disease, 

No one should raise objections to the propriety of 
this view who is himself capable of risking property and 
person for the public safety, or who holds that the 


304 THE HOLY SPIRIT 


public should take risks for private safety. Surely we 
are not to fancy that one may wisely guard against phys- 
ical evils and disregard spiritual; that the bad conse- 
quences of a bad life are to be carefully shunned so long 
as the consequences are temporal, and to be freely risked 
if only they are eternal—for this world feared, for the 
next world defied. The infatuation of laxity is never 
more marked than when it esteems it liberal to shut one’s 
own eyes, or one’s neighbor’s eyes, and calls it bigotry 
for a prudent man to foresee the evil and flee from it. 

But it would be disastrous to believe that security 
from future penalties can leave one in the present power 
of sin. That power is itself an awful penalty of sin. 
Paul urges that justification is more than clearance from 
guilt and penalties. Grace makes alive. A Christian 
is a justified man, and a justified man is one who lives 
by the grace which justified him (Rom. 6 : I-II). 
Here the importance of the resurrection begins to ap- 
pear. It completes what the crucifixion provides. We 
are “risen with Christ” (Col. 3:1). A Christian, then, 
is one who lives, and “Christ is his life” (Col. 3 : 4). 
This idea became the well-known specialty of John’s 
teaching and is the loftiest reach of the New Testa- 
ment doctrine. “In him was life’ is the melody of 
John’s gospel: “He that hath the Son hath life? aie 
the clear echo from the first Epistle (John 1:4; 1 John 
5:12). It is the new ideal toward which the church 
is advancing, the always fuller attestation that the Holy 
Spirit inspired the Book and leads his people on. 


A Christian, then, or follower of Christ, as he figures 
in the New Testament, is one who successively accepted 


THE GUIDE-BOOK 305 


Jesus as Messiah, adopted him as Teacher, became the 
subject of Christ’s rule in the spiritual realm, was justi- 
fied in Christ, trusted in the crucifixion as a piacular | 
sacrifice, by grace was delivered from sin, finally was 
one whose life is hid with Christ in God. 

These views as to what a Christian is were held one 
after another, and he advanced correspondingly. What 
a Christian at any stage of development was thought to 
be reveals what Christ was then thought to do. The 
living embodiment of these ideas is the living attestation 
to God's work in a man and to God’s thought in the 
Book. The inspired Book has produced the inspired life, 
and inspired lives through all the Christian ages have 
commended the inspiration of the Book. Criticism can- 
not set this aside, and none more heartily believe it than 
many critics. It does not matter so much who were the 
writers if God was the author of the sacred Scriptures. 

The maturer, then, the development, and the finer 
the type of a Christian, the larger is his experience of 
Christian ideas; and the larger that experience, the com- 
pleter the assurance to him and to all men that those 
ideas are from God. He knows, as no one else is able 
or ought to know, that the Holy Spirit gave to men the 
truth which it is the Spirit’s supreme office to apply ; 
and he is assured, as no one else is or can be assured, 
that the sacred Scriptures are a deposit of that truth. 
The life of such a Christian proves to others the inspi- 
ration of the Bible; the truth itself attests it to him. 
Faith in the Bible will not decline if the average type 
of Christian advances ; faith in the Bible will not perish 
unless Christians cease to be. 


y MikebaS | 
a ae me 


ye 


INDEX 


Acts, book of, 299. 

Aid: occasional, 14; to Jesus, 125; to 
Christ, 131. 

Annunciation to Mary, 12. 

Apostles’ Creed, 13. 

Apostles taught, 189. 

Assurance, Christian, 252. 


Baptism: of Jesus, 97; of the Christ, 
101; of the Spirit. (See Equipment. ) 

Bible. (See Guide Book.) 

Biblical theology, 2. 

Biederwolf, on Holy Spirit, 3, 269, 

Blasphemy of Spirit, 16. 


Candlish, on Spirit, 3. 

Christ. (See Jesus Christ.) 

Christian consciousness, 203. 

Christian: New Testament idea of, 
296 ; a witness for Christ, 169; a wit- 
ness against Christ, 171; a witness to 
inspiration, 295. 

Church. (See Household.) 

Clifford, Professor, 205. 

Conviction: of sin, 216; of righteous- 
ness, 219; of judgment, 223. 

Criticism, biblical, 294. 

Crucifixion, 142, 181. 


Denny, Professor, 104. 
Development of doctrine, 281. 
Disbelief, sin of, 216. 
Dipersonality of God, 94. 
Divinity of Christ, 90. 


Earnest of the Spirit. (See Outlook.) 

Equipment of new life, 247, 268. 

Era: of the Spirit, 53; old, 54; transi- 
tion, 66; new, 73. 

Exegesis by Spirit, 200. 

Experience: a source, 1, 203; an evi- 
dence, 34, 169, 295. 


Faith: of individual, 216; of church, 
280. 
Fullness of Spirit. (See Equipment. ) 


Gifts of the Spirit. (See Equipment.) 
Guidance into truth, 173. 
Guide Book—Bible, 291. 


Hare, ‘‘ Mission of Comforter,” 215. 

He or It? 6, 32. 

Highest life, 269. 

Holy Spirit: personality of, in Old 
Testament, 6. In New Testament, 
12; impersonal, 12; personal, 18; 
impersonal-personal, 22; procession 
of, 31; He or It? 6, 82; in us, 34; 
distinguishable? 36. In Trinity, 42. 
Waysof, 46: occasional—miracle, 46; 
ordinary—ministry of truth, 47. Two 
eras of, 53; old era of, 64; transition 
of, 66; new era of, 73. Begets Christ, 
76; objections, 82; results, 89. In- 
stalls Christ, 97; by baptism, 97, 101; 
by temptation, 104. Aids Christ, 123 ; 
vindicates Christ, 158 ; interprets 
Christ, 173. Office of, to world, 213; 
convictions, 216. Office to believers, 
232; regeneration, 233; sanctifica- 
tion, 242; assurance, 252 ; equipment, 
268; earnest, 274. In church, 279; 
faith of, 280; work of, 287. In Bible, 
291; defective test, 291; convincing 
test, 295. 

Household—the church, 279; teaches 
197; mystical body? 279; faith of, 
280; work of, 287. 


Impersonal Spirit, 6, 12. 
Impersonal-personal Spirit, 22. 
Infilling of Spirit. (See Equipment. ) 
Influence, Spirit an, 7. 

Inspiration. (See Guide Book.) 
Interpretation, rules of, 4. 


307 


308 


Jesus Christ: Spirit of, 26; departure 
expedient, 66. Begotten, 76; divin- 
ity, 90; pre-existence, 93; sinless 
susceptibility, 95. Installed, 97; bap- 
tism, 97,101; temptation, 104. Aided, 
123. Vindicated, 158; then, 158; now, 
168. Interpreted, 173: then, 173 ; now, 
194. 

John’s views, 12, 14, 18, 23, 26, 216, 220, 
244. 

Judgment, conviction of, 223. 

Justification, 301. 


Keswick movement, 269. 


Law : mental and moral, 50; physical, 
140. 

Life: Christian doctrine of, 275; evi- 
dence for Christ, 169; in Christ, 184 ; 
evidence for Bible, 295. 


Messianic idea, 297. 

Methods of Spirit, 46. 

Ministry of truth, 48, 73, 114, 131, WAG 
209, 216, 223, 235, 247, 264, 278, 280, 295. 

Miracle, 47, 51; of Jesus, 133; nature 
of, 141; now? 168. 

Mysticism, true and false, 258, 271, 279, 
285, 287. 

Mystical body. (See Household.) 

Nature: laws of, 140; course of, 140. 

New Birth. (See New Life.) 

New life, 233; produced, 234; nature, 
237; progress, 242; assurance, 252 ; 
equipment, 268; outlook, 274. 

‘‘New Thought,’’ 136. 


Old-Testament: on Spirit, 6; views of, 
in New, 12, 17, 26, 31. 
Outlook of new life, 274. 


Paradox of, new life, 244. 

Paul’s views, 27, 78, 245, 302. 

Pentecost: 22, 160; repeated, 25, 167; 
results of, 160. 


INDEX 


Personality: defined, 19, 44; of the 
Spirit, 6, 18, 34, 43. 

Peter’s views, 24, 26, 163. 

Priesthood and symbols, 56. 

Procession of Spirit, 31. 

Prophecy, 10, 57, 191. 


Redemption, 181, 184. 

Regeneration. (See New Life.) 

Resurrection: of Christ, 150; fruits of, 
153; of saints, 274. 

Revivals, 287, 290. 

Righteousness, conviction of, 219. 

Ritschlianism, 82. 


Salvation, 303. 

Sanctification, 242 ; 
268. 

Sealing, 277. 

Sin: witness against Christ, 171; con- 
viction of, 216. 

Sinlessness of Jesus, 95. 

Social faculties in church, 288. 

Spirit of Christ, 26. 

Symbols in religion, 54. 


means of, 247, 


Teaching: of Jesus, 131; of Spirit, 158, 
173; limited, 174; now, 168, 194. 

Temptation of Christ, 95, 104; nature 
of, 109. 

Tradition, 195. 

Trinity, 30, 42. 

Truth. (See Ministry of Truth.) 


Universality of Christ, 74, 186. 
Unction. (See Equipment.) 


Vindication of Christ, 158. 
Virgin birth of Christ, 76. 


Walker’s “ Spirit and Incarnation,”’ 86. 
Ways of Spirit. (See Methods of.) 
Wisdom books, 64. 

Witness of Spirit, 254. 

World, office of Spirit to, 213. 


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